Initiation and the Performance of Occultism a DISSERTATION

Home , A Garden of Pomegranates, Banishing, Ceremonial magic, Choronzon, Divine language, Gavin Frost

NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY

Thinning the Veils: Initiation and the Performance of Occultism

A DISSERTATION

SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS

for the degree

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Field of Performance Studies

Jason Lawton Winslade

EVANSTON, ILLINOIS

June 2008

Thinning the Veils: Initiation and the Performance of Occultism

Jason Lawton Winslade

Initiation is a performative model that dictates the participation of individuals in the various traditions of Western occultism, locating that individual within a nexus of practices and discourses that facilitate the transmission of occult teachings to that individual. While the act of initiation may be represented by a single performed rite, the paradigmatic aspects of initiation pervade the entirety of Western occultism, so that practitioners’ encounters with textuality and language, history, magical action, ritual performance, and political activism are interpreted as initiatic experiences. The initiation rite itself is a structured performance in which practitioners actively engage with these aspects of occult knowledge. Correspondingly, the process of initiation also becomes a descriptive metaphor for a candidate’s training in these knowledges.

Accordingly, the dissertation identifies these occult knowledges as initiatic discourses, in which the use of initiatory metaphor is crucial to a practitioner’s understanding of occultism. Initiatic discourse refers to a particular way of engaging with knowledge, language, symbols, and experience that actively emphasizes the practitioner’s ability to respond to and mold these discourses. In turn, these discourses are said to transform the practitioner through gnosis, defined by esotericism scholar Arthur Versluis as “experiential insight into the nature of the divine as manifested in the individual and in the cosmos” ( Restoring Paradise 1-2). I argue that this engagement with occult discourse and practice is at its core a performance experience, in which practitioners make various performative moves that enhance their participation in the nexus of 4 occultism. Further, I maintain that the academic study of occultism itself is imbued with notions of the performative through an initiatic paradigm. Therefore, the dissertation identifies occultism as a field of inquiry that can be significantly illuminated through the application of performance studies. 5 Preface

When I began writing about occultism, ritual magic, and Paganism in 1996, I was not able to locate much scholarly material on these topics that was to my liking. Historical analyses were dry, uninteresting and often inaccurate. 1 Ethnographies were scarce and seemed to weigh heavily against practitioners, portraying them as irrational or silly. On the other hand, work written by practitioners was mostly uncritical and, to be honest, not very scholarly. Occult practitioners interested in academic writing on their practice often had to settle for outdated and unsympathetic scholarship. Any hint of association with his or her subject would draw harsh criticism of the scholar’s loss of objectivity. I realized that, being in a performance studies program that encouraged more direct engagement with one’s subject matter, I was in a unique position (or so I thought) of being both a scholar and a practitioner, having been involved in ceremonial magick and Paganism for several years. Since then, much has changed. The field of

Western Esotericism has grown into a legitimate branch of Religious Studies. Pagan Studies is now emerging as a subfield of the study of New Religious Movements, with accompanying academic journals and several book series. Scholar/practitioners are becoming almost more of a rule than the exception in Pagan Studies. A colleague of mine in New York is even starting an academic journal to cover specific topics pertaining to spirituality and performance. Given the amount of quality scholarship currently being published on these topics, I have to struggle

1 Throughout this text, I follow recent trends in Pagan studies in using the term Pagan with a capital ‘P’ to refer to contemporary practitioners of various practices associated with Paganism, rather than the former term “neopaganism.” This is mainly because practitioners generally call themselves “Pagans” and not “neopagans,” but also because the latter term implies a false historical continuity with pre-Christian religions. Similarly, I capitalize Witchcraft to denote the contemporary Western religious practice, as opposed to the lower case form that refers to a broader historical and cross-cultural set of practices not necessarily associated with any one religion. 6 considerably less to claim legitimacy for a dissertation on occultism and magic. Yet, I still hope

to forge my own way.

In Enchanted Feminism , a relatively recent ethnography on the Reclaiming Collective, a well-known feminist witchcraft group based out of San Francisco, the author, Jone Salomonsen, maintains that even though she advocates a deep immersion in the religious experiences of the group one is studying, she “[does] not intend to bring about any further magical currents from having been initiated except this book and its various receptions in the reader” (20). My intentions as a scholar could not have been more different. In between attending a master’s program in Theatre Studies at the University of Michigan and the PhD program in Performance

Studies at Northwestern, and under circumstances completely unrelated to academia, I had effectively become a magickal practitioner. 2 Thus when I decided to write about magickal practices, I knew I could not merely write and leave them behind. Rather, I was embarking on a journey in a new city and a new life, beginning (initiating) magickal practices that would change my life for many years to come. Though my daily practice has somewhat lessened from when I began this pursuit in Michigan fifteen years ago, I plan to continue to engage and challenge this spirituality throughout my life. Therefore, my magickal interests ran parallel to my graduate education. Instead of the scholar entering the magickal world, I often felt the opposite: I was a magickal practitioner entering the scholarly world, eventually reading and interpreting the scholarly world in a magickal fashion. Graduate school was my crucible; this dissertation and my experiences while writing it were my initiation.

In the PhD program at Northwestern, I faced the dilemma of articulating exactly what I meant by magick and, even more importantly, determining how much I wanted to reveal about 7 my identity and my practices, which were still relatively new to me. My worries seemed confirmed when, at my PhD recital, the late Dwight Conquergood, chair of Performance Studies at the time, jokingly asked if I was going to levitate as part of my performance. Yet, Dr.

Conquergood encouraged me to put my beliefs in action through performance. In one of his unforgettable classes, I participated in a group presentation with other students who happened to have ministerial experience in their own spiritual faiths, including an African-American Baptist preacher. At the conclusion of the piece, all of us conferred our individual blessings on some corn bread, re-enacting a scene from a story one of the group members told about working with

Appalachian communities. As many who remember Dr. Conquergood would attest, his classes often involved food, and the diverse blessings of this bread were welcomed and celebrated in the classroom, on an intellectual and emotional level. Thus, it was through performance--especially in the performance studies context--that I was able to publicly legitimize a deeply personal belief and practice within a scholarly context. It was the performance studies approach to ethnography as a deep engagement with communities and practices, and the potential to incorporate the complex subjectivity of the performing scholar into writing, that encouraged me to take a practitioner’s stance in my work.

My insider status began with my own personal studies and interactions with various magickal communities in Ann Arbor, Michigan and Cleveland, Ohio between 1993 and 1995.

After beginning the Ph.D. program at Northwestern in 1995, I had located an individual who had agreed to be a mentor and teacher for my spiritual pursuits, Matthew Ellenwood. 3 With him, I

2 Here, like many other practitioners, I use the ‘k’ spelling to distinguish this strain of the Western esoteric tradition from stage magic.

8 helped form a short-lived, small working group who called themselves “The Kinship of the

Braided Oak.” I describe one of their rituals in the dissertation. In 1996, my teacher and I began to attend regular full moon rituals with a nascent group who, at the time, was affiliated with a

Unitarian Church on the south side of Chicago. This group, which became known as

“Moonbeats,” grew to be extremely popular with local practitioners, their rituals often boasting attendance between sixty and a hundred people at each event and a mailing list three times that size. It was during my time with Moonbeats that I honed my particular ritual skills, since I often played a prominent role in organizing and conducting the rituals, along with Matthew Ellenwood and Teresa Lynch. 4 It was at this time that I also began attending various large Pagan festivals on private land in Indiana, Ohio and New York.

In 1999, my interest began to shift towards a group called the Hermetic Order of

Chicago. I was immediately taken by the seeming warmth and lack of pretentiousness among the participants. According to its founder, Althea Northage-Orr, the group had been around in one form or other for about twenty-five years and was deeply concerned with individual development on spiritual, emotional and psychological levels. 5 I also learned that the group had their own private land, consisting of forests and ritual spaces, several hours east in Indiana. Everything I found in this group was attractive. Thus, I began to attend the Hermetic Order’s open rituals with

3 Mr. Ellenwood, also a theatrical and musical performer in Chicago, is still active in the local magickal community and is the founder and main facilitator for a group called The Brotherhood of the Phoenix, a Hermetic/Pagan mystery school specifically for gay men interested in magickal training.

4 Oddly enough, Ms. Lynch actually attended St. Mary’s College at the same time that I attended the University of Notre Dame (St. Mary’s College is the University of Notre Dame’s “sister school” and part of the Notre Dame community). This is where I first heard of Paganism, though I did not pursue the practice at the time. Even more coincidentally, Teresa had been leading Wiccan rituals on campus and actually was the girlfriend of my friend who first told me about Paganism.

5 In another interesting “coincidence,” Althea, like Teresa Lynch, had attended St. Mary’s College (in the 1960’s), and her husband, John Northage, hails from South Bend, Indiana, where the University of Notre Dame is located. 9 fervor, and by that fall I went through a rite known by the members as “Dedication,” in which an individual receives the support of the community in his or her pursuit of what the Order calls

“the path of light.” The group’s literature described this path as “the peculiarly Western

Hermetic notion, that our work here is to bring more and more of creation into higher evolution i.e., to bring potential into activated form.” 6 Thus, individuals dedicate themselves to a life in which achievement of positive goals is paramount.

The following spring I was initiated as a member of the Order in the Earth Degree (the

Order had a series of degrees based on elements, somewhat similar to the Golden Dawn). I then became quite invested in the Order’s education process, taking over the title of Education

Director, overseeing the instruction of individuals seeking to dedicate or join the group. Once again my dual identity as an academic and a practitioner was coming together. My experiences with the Order and my relationships with its members certainly furthered my research. The Order became a central part of my life as my community and surrogate family. My wife, whom I met shortly before joining the Order and married in an Order ritual, became a prominent figure in the group, often serving as a priestess for ritual. This was despite the fact that she did not have the same initiatory status as the so-called clergy in the group. However, after five years with the

Order, internal tensions within the group, and personal conflicts between the leaders and particular members caused this group, which had existed in some form for almost twenty-five years, to finally collapse and disband in 2004. The dissolution was heartbreaking and traumatic for all involved, especially my wife and me, since we had played prominent roles in the ritual cycle that year. Some of the external community still exists from that group, and we still gather

6 From The Hermetic Order’s explanation of the Dedicant Oath in its packet on dedication. Versions of this document date back to 1993, and this version is from 2001. 10 socially occasionally or do a ritual, but the days of the Hermetic Order as I knew them are

over. 7 This work is certainly infused with my experiences in these groups and my experiences within the larger magickal community, which now includes Pagan academics. My personal spiritual path has been fairly eclectic, and the best way I can think to categorize it is as a combination of Pagan and Hermetic Philosophy.

Though I am not currently an initiate of an active group, it is not because my research time is over. My personal interests have recently moved away from standard ritual structures and more towards free form, improvisational fire circles where drumming and dancing are the methods of engagement with the divine. Fire circles of this type are mostly held at larger festivals (some specifically Pagan, others more eclectic). These events feature large-scale public rituals and workshops, often by prominent authors and practitioners, while the central staple of these events for many is the ritual fire with dancing and drumming. Primarily, these festivals include Starwood, held in western New York, Pagan Spirit Gathering in southern Ohio, and Elf

Fest at the nature sanctuary known as Lothlorien, in southern Indiana, near Bloomington. I attended these festivals both with groups and on my own. Over time, I became proficient at drumming around the fire, and I soon began to offer my own workshops, often to talk about my academic work. These workshops were always well received, especially since I discovered that many in the magickal community were either scholars themselves or at least armchair scholars. I have met many people and made many connections at these festivals, and my knowledge and experience of magickal practitioners, and the issues and events that concern them, has been

7 Since the formal disbanding of the Hermetic Order, Althea and several former Order members have continued instructing and training students on Hermeticism in the city and on their private land, Glastonbury Center. However, unlike the Hermetic Order, these initiates function exclusively in a paid student/teacher environment. 11 significantly enriched. I still attend these festivals for pleasure, to drum, to socialize, to network, to deepen my spiritual work, to give workshops, to continue my research and to continually keep updated on the happenings in the larger community. It is through these events and other gatherings that I remain close with my friends and family in the magickal community.

At the same time my festival experiences began, I was also attending academic conferences and finding the similarities between the two events striking. In some cases, the differences were usually surface: one was in a hotel with individuals in jackets and dress clothes, while the other was outside with participants wearing imaginative robes and skirts, and sometimes nothing at all. Both involved exchanges of ideas and intellectual discussion. At a particular theatre conference in San Antonio in 1997, I joined with a colleague, then a graduate student from the University of Texas, on a performative panel entitled “Wiccan Performativity.”

In this panel, we performed an “academic ritual” substituting academic jargon and theory for typical Wiccan invocations. The crux of our presentation, however, was a dialogue between us in which my fieldwork at the festivals and theories on magickal practice were juxtaposed with my colleague’s work on the European witch trials (through the lens of Carol Churchill’s play,

Vinegar Tom ) and her own personal narrative about a physically and sexually abusive relationship. We often spoke each other’s words, reading each other’s works, and even reversing our genders in the dialogue that was part of her narrative. The emotional and intellectual response to our panel was quite strong and, afterwards, several academics “came out” to me about their identities as Wiccans or Pagans. These individuals expressed their fears about being truthful in regards to their spiritual beliefs and practices within a university setting and vocalized a bit of envy towards me that I was somehow figuring out how to negotiate that complex dance. 12 This experience strengthened my resolve to continually bring my two worlds of academia and magic together, a union that persistently made sense to me.

In my years of involvement in this practice with these particular communities, I have come to regard magical practice not as something weird, spooky, or irrational. Of course, over fifteen years, I have met many unique individuals who would certainly fit any perceived stereotype of “Wiccans,” “Pagans” or “New-Agers.” In addition, my personal practice has moved away from pre-planned group ritual and towards a more improvisational style with an emphasis on drumming and dancing around fire. Yet overall, this practice provides me with strong community ties; political views; enjoyable, sometimes powerful, rituals; and an opportunity to communicate and discuss intellectual, philosophical, and religious ideas. Yet, I do not wish to concentrate on my personal spiritual beliefs as such, but rather to focus on how these beliefs and practices, within the context of individual identity and community, actually function.

My fascination with initiation, as both a ritual and a metaphor, fuels this dissertation and grounds my own experiences in the discourses and practices of esotericism and occultism. I hope to avoid the pitfalls of self-absorption often associated with such efforts by adopting a position that is both skeptical and open to the contingencies of individual experience. Often in texts about spirituality, particularly those involved with the occult, the writer focuses on questions of validity and belief, spending a great deal of effort proving or disproving occult phenomena, or attempting to explain why people believe in such irrational stuff. This is most certainly not my agenda. Within this work, I wish to focus on what these beliefs and practices actually do, and why they matter on both a personal and political level. At the same time, I hope to prove that magical, occult practices, while often working in the margins and fringes of Western society, are not necessarily the strange and irrational phenomena that they are popularly perceived to be. 13 Rather, these discourses and practices are an essential part of both the history and contemporary construction of Western society.

Thus, I wish to establish these beliefs and practices within the broader historical and theoretical context of occultism and, by doing so, attest to the value of occultism, not simply as a marginalized discourse, but as a legitimate field through which some of the major debates of postmodernism, poststructuralism, and performance studies can be articulated. Study and discourse on topics of esotericism, mysticism, and occultism, though they are achieving increased prominence in the academy, are still constantly challenged by Enlightenment ideals and rationalist biases. I hope that this work contributes to the establishment of occultism as a field worthy of study within any discipline.

Acknowledgments

I wish to acknowledge and thank primarily my wife Nicole, my stepson Kyle and my blissfully unaware baby daughter Caileigh for their support and patience during this long process; my brother Christopher Winslade, who provided me with a means for an income and strong familial support; my parents for their encouragement; the members of the Hermetic Order and its surrounding community, particularly Althea Northage-Orr, Alan Salmi, Jeff Ray, David

Whittingham, Edison Girard, and Anne de Courtenay; my other friends in the magical community who have encouraged me, particularly Matthew Ellenwood, Lilith Dorsey, Nicole

Edgecomb, and Kate Mura; my friend Kimberly McMahon who offered a writer’s advice about overcoming Resistance; my academic colleagues who have offered their insight and collaboration on conference projects and publications, particularly Jane Barnette, Michael

O’Hara, Gwendolyn Alker, Lance Gharavi, Edmund Lingan, Kirk Everist, Anna Kay Jensen, Peg 14 Aloi, and Susan Kattwinkel; my Northwestern colleagues who critiqued much of my work in a reading group, particularly Amy Partridge, Emily Colborn-Roxworthy, Rebecca Rossen and

Ioana Sizeman; my students at DePaul University who acted as sounding boards for my ideas on occultism and helped with some research, as well as Eileen Seifert, my advisor and supporter within the First-Year Writing Program at DePaul; and, of course, my advisors and teachers at

Northwestern University, particularly Margaret Thompson Drewal, Richard Kieckhefer, Paul

Edwards, and the late Dwight Conquergood. I also greatly appreciate the help of E. Patrick

Johnson, the chair of the graduate program in Performance Studies, and Alan Shefsky, the administrative assistant and psychopomp for the Performance Studies Department. Finally, I would like to dedicate this work to my dear departed friend Holly Lasecki, who praised me and encouraged me in my work before her death in October of 2004. 15

Inheritor of a Dying World, we call thee to the Living Beauty. Wanderer in the Wild Darkness, we call thee to the Gentle Light. Long hast thou dwelt in darkness – Quit the Night and seek the Day. - Golden Dawn Neophyte Ritual (Regardie, Golden Dawn 125-6).

16 TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. 3 PREFACE …. …. ….…. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …5

Chapter I. THE PATH OF THE NEOPHYTE: RESEARCHING OCCULTISM…. …. …17

II. PASSAGE TO PARADIGM: REVEALING THE DISCOURSE OF OCCULTISM …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. ..….74

III. “EVERY OBJECT HIDES A SECRET”: OCCULT TEXTUALITY, LANGUAGE AND SIGNS…. …. …. …. ….. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. ..122

IV. “THE INVERTED IMAGE OF PRACTICE”: HOAX TEXTS AND THE INVENTION OF OCCULT TRADITION.. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. 166

V. “ONLY THEORY CAN BREAK THE SPELL”: MAGIC AS PERFORMATIVE POWER …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. 208

VI. “WHEN THE VEILS ARE THIN:” THE PERFORMANCE OF MAGICKAL RITUAL …. …. …. ..…. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. 254

VII. “SHE CHANGES EVERYTHING SHE TOUCHES”: AN OCCULT POLITICS .. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. 298

VIII. THE “SENSUOUS MOMENT OF KNOWING”: INITIATION AND THE PERFORMANCE OF OCCULT TRANSMISSION…. …. …. …. …. …. …. 343

REFERENCES..…. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. ….. …. 394 17 Chapter One The Path of the Neophyte: Researching Occultism

Accordingly, the dissertation identifies these occult knowledges as initiatic discourses, in which the use of initiatory metaphor is crucial to a practitioner’s understanding of occultism. Initiatic discourse refers to a particular way of engaging with knowledge, language, symbols, and experience that actively emphasizes the practitioner’s ability to respond to and mold these discourses. In turn, these discourses are said to transform the practitioner through gnosis, defined by esotericism scholar Arthur Versluis as “experiential insight into the nature of the divine as manifested in the individual and in the cosmos” ( Restoring Paradise 1-2). I argue that this engagement with occult discourse and practice is at its core a performance experience, in which practitioners make various performative moves that enhance their participation in the nexus of occultism. Further, I maintain that the academic study of occultism itself is imbued with notions of the performative through an initiatic paradigm. Therefore, the dissertation identifies occultism 18 as a field of inquiry that can be significantly illuminated through the application of

performance studies.

My formulation of occultism specifically refers to a method of approaching esoteric

subject matter popularized in the late-nineteenth century and continued into the twenty-first.

Occultism in this sense identifies various esoteric traditions as technological systems that can be

deconstructed into their functional parts and then reintegrated into a workable system for the

individual practitioner, who may or may not apply that system to a set of personal beliefs and

religious attitudes. A primary example of such a method can be found in the practice of The

Golden Dawn, an important late-nineteenth century initiatory group which combined aspects of

Egyptian mythology, Hermetic philosophy, mystical Christianity (specifically Rosicrucianism),

Eastern meditation, and Masonic ritual and hierarchy, among other sources. The Golden Dawn,

exercising immense influence on twentieth-century occult practice, continues to be a firm

presence in that practice today, evidenced by Golden Dawn rituals, techniques and philosophies

figuring prominently in contemporary manuals for practitioners, especially on the subject of

“ceremonial magick.” In addition, several “official” Golden Dawn organizations are currently

active in the United States, and countless organizations worldwide follow the Golden Dawn

model of initiation and group structure.

The Golden Dawn also played a part in the origin and development of contemporary

Witchcraft, specifically in that the movement’s founder, Gerald Gardner, adapted aspects of

Golden Dawn rituals, symbolism, and philosophy for his formulation of Wicca. In my use of these terms, I will attempt to represent the ongoing controversy among practitioners about what label properly denotes their practice, and will follow the delineations used by practitioners and contemporary scholars. Wicca refers to the specifically Golden Dawn and Masonic influenced 19 practice of worshiping a God and a Goddess through an initiatory tradition developed by

Gerald Gardner in the mid-1950s. Witchcraft (with a capital ‘W’) denotes various Western

European folk traditions practiced by contemporary women and men who call themselves

“witches.” Some practitioners differentiate between Wicca as a mystery religion and Witchcraft

as a personal practice not necessarily bound to a religious worldview, while others see

Witchcraft itself as a nature religion, in which reverence for the Earth is paramount. Further,

many practitioners prefer the more general label of “Pagan” to denote a polytheistic cosmology

and a desire to distance their practice from Gardnerian Wicca and from the more controversial

label of “Witch.” 1 This confusion of terms speaks to the highly individual nature of these

practices, as well as to the practice’s conflicting discourses on histories and origins. For instance,

the use of the word “Witch” in American-based feminist witchcraft emanates from a desire to

associate the plight of contemporary women with the persecution of women as “witches”

throughout Western European history. While earlier practitioners claimed an actual kinship and

lineage with these women and their imagined practices, current practitioners acknowledge that

the association is primarily symbolic.

Therefore when I approach occult history, it is through the lens of ceremonial magick and

contemporary Paganism, not only because they are popular contemporary trends, but because my

1 In her ethnography, Magic, Witchcraft and the Otherworld: An Anthropology (2000), Susan Greenwood makes the general assertion that practitioners call themselves pagans, while those that study them call them neopagans (20). However, this distinction is not always accurate. According to Sabina Magliocco, Neo-Paganism was a term coined in 1890s Britain, and rediscovered and popularized by practitioner and author Oberon Zell in 1971 ( Witching Culture 4). That same year, Isaac Bonewits’ Real Magic used the term ‘neo-paganism’ as a contrast to what he called ‘paleo-paganism’ and ‘meso-paganism.’ Religious scholar Michael York quite problematically establishes paganism as a general category for practitioners of various indigenous, non-monotheistic religions (2003). Recently, the terms Pagan and Paganism (or Paganisms, to indicate the variations among practices) has been reclaimed as an academic term by Pagan Studies, an emerging field within the American Academy of Religions. Alta Mira Press, for instance has begun solicitations for a new Pagan Studies series. In this work, I follow this practice by referring to contemporary practitioners of neopaganism as Pagans. 20 research and experiences were primarily with these practitioners. In this work, movements and

philosophies like Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism, Hermeticism, and Theosophy provide a

necessary foundation for understanding the social, political, and religious context from which

these popular trends emerged. Many esoteric groups and their individual representatives utilize

occult ideas to explain their philosophies and further their agendas. Most of them also employ

ritual and initiation as part of their repertoire. However, when I look at particular philosophies,

movements, groups, or individuals within Western occultism, I tend to focus more on those that

employ magical practice within a ritual and initiatory setting.

Here, I utilize a practitioner’s sense of the term “ritual,” denoting an ordered sequence of

events and actions designed to cue participants to experience transformative shifts in

consciousness. Practitioners construct ritual time and space as something that happens “between

the worlds,” similar to notions of liminal space/time as formulated by Van Gennep and Turner.

Ritual may consist of repeated actions and liturgy that are dictated according to tradition, or

based on improvisation and improvisatory communication between individuals. Thus, ritual may

be public and communal or private and individual. Following ritual studies scholar Ronald

Grimes, I also acknowledge ritual’s ability to not only performatively frame “idealized activity,”

but also to “shape the reality outside its boundaries, permeating it so that living itself is suffused

with ritual values” ( Marrying 217). This paradigmatic function determines, to a degree, the ways in which practitioners who undergo initiation interpret both their occult training and life experiences as initiatory. Thus, for practitioners, symbolic patterns and gestures outside of ritual may still contain layered meanings as they do in ritual. This process, what both Grimes and

Catherine Bell call “ritualization,” involves a “culturally strategic way of acting” that provides an

21 interpretive framework for social activity (Bell, Ritual Theory 34). For instance, in a typical scene we will explore in a later chapter, Wiccan activists may interpret marching and singing at a protest rally as a magical act intended to produce a positive change in the protestors, the activist movement as a whole, or in those being protested (or all three).

Magic itself is another highly fraught term and hundreds of years of discourse around the term have not diminished its ineffability. For my purposes, the act of magic specifically refers to the conscious and directed use of symbolic language and action within a ritualized frame, meant to achieve a goal, which may be material (such as attaining wealth) or spiritual (achieving gnosis), or both (achieving gnosis through exploring the meaning of wealth). Some contemporary practitioners follow the trend popularized by famous occultist Aleister Crowley and spell magic with a “k,” to denote a specific tradition of practice stemming from the traditions synthesized by the Golden Dawn. 2 In this dissertation, I will also follow this trend, distinguishing

“magick,” a particular practice within the Western occult tradition, from the more generic term

“magic,” which applies to more general, cross-cultural notions of a seemingly supernatural force that can be manipulated by practitioners. In the second case, a person can be said to have magical powers; a product can work like magic; a child can have a magical imagination, etc. However, I certainly keep the Western occult traditions in mind when I am dealing with these generalizations about magic, particularly in terms of ideology and phenomenology. I also

2 The spelling of magick with a k was popularized by Aleister Crowley in his seminal work Magick In Theory and Practice (1929). Crowley brought back the Anglo-Saxon spelling primarily to distinguish his practice from stage magic, though he also had political reasons for separating himself from his magical rivals. Alex Owen points out that for Crowley, the k also introduces an erotic aspect of the practice, since k signifies kteis, the Greek word for genitalia ( Place of Enchantment 218, 304). Throughout my text, I will be using the ‘k’ spelling whenever referring to discourse and practices that have emerged from the Western tradition that Crowley represents. 22 establish magick as a particular modality of practice for practice within the method and philosophy of occultism.

In this context, occultism has an additional connotation of hiddenness and secrecy. Here, hiddenness should not necessarily be read as supernatural. Rather, it indicates a sense of the mysterious and the esoteric and implies that one can attempt to understand and implement these secrets, if not fully comprehend them. Furthermore, this hiddenness often implies a class division, in that the secret knowledge is reserved for an elite few and not for others. Because of this implication, the term occultism has become quite problematic for contemporary magickal practitioners. Many, like the well-known feminist witchcraft collective Reclaiming, now disdain traditional notions of the occult group as hierarchical, patriarchal and elitist. They prefer a more egalitarian approach to magickal practice that eschews the ceremonial robes, high titles and secret initiations of late-nineteenth- and early twentieth-century occultism, images associated with popular perceptions of groups like the Freemasons and the Golden Dawn. Despite these critiques of occultism, I argue that the idea of occultism has maintained its relevance to contemporary magickal practice, by adapting to practitioners’ changing concerns over performance issues. As we shall see, the primary medium for this adaptation is initiatic performance both as metaphor and ritual practice. Through an examination of this adaptation, I detail the transformation of the term “occult” and many of the beliefs and practices that the word indicates from its once stable usage as “secret” or “hidden” to a much more negotiated, interactive and performative meaning. To this end, I examine the ways in which occultism dialogues with discourses on the performance of power, performativity, and representation and identity.

23 Chapter Outline

My main text is divided into four sections, corresponding to the four Hebrew letters of the Tetragrammaton, the magical phrase for God used by Kabbalists. The first section, Yod , outlines the discourses of occultism, initiation and magic. In the first chapter, I introduce initiation as both a performance and a performative, noting the ways in which performance and performance studies are relevant to occult practice. Further, I demonstrate how contemporary ethnographies on occult practices and groups engage in initiation narratives in writing about the immersion of the scholar in his or her field. The second chapter further describes the discourse of occultism in relation to the field of Western esotericism, tracing the occult genealogy that provides the historical foundation for my work. I also build upon recent discussions about occultism’s place in social and political history, particularly in terms of modernity.

The next section, corresponding to the Hebrew letter He , establishes the foundations for initiation as a function of language, textuality, and performativity. Chapter three analyzes the performative nature of occult approaches to language, reading and writing. Here, I focus on both the Renaissance system of magical correspondences, the method of drawing analogies between disparate objects and ideas in the occult world, and its relation to Kabbalistic methods of interpretation. I also demonstrate how occultists, like Elizabethan magician John Dee, apply this method to reading sacred texts, the natural world and divine revelation. Chapter four follows

Arthur Versluis’s theories on the initiatory nature of occult texts, conceiving reading and writing as acts of magic themselves that establish occult authority and facilitate the transmission of esoteric knowledge. These texts serve to establish and further initiatory lineages in the absence of actual unbroken traditions, even to the point of inventing “unbroken” traditions. Here, I demonstrate how occultists have used texts, hoaxes and imagined histories not only to justify 24 their existence, but also to nurture their pursuit of the hidden, employing the novel Foucault’s

Pendulum , by semiotician Umberto Eco, as an illustration of occult strategies that reveal the hidden in texts and history. In particular, I focus on the Rosicrucian Manifestos as examples of occult texts that utilize fictional histories to formulate occult agendas. In chapter five, I introduce some of the basic concepts of ritual magick, detailing how this occult practice emerges from the complex and varied notion of magic within post-Enlightenment discourse. I begin with two classic definitions of magic: Sir James Frazer’s notion of sympathetic and contagious magic and

Aleister Crowley’s definition of “magick.” Magic as a powerful metaphor serves as a crucial link between occultism and critiques of the Enlightenment, particularly in the work of the Frankfurt

School of philosophy and Michael Taussig’s exploration of magic in politics and colonialism. I will also examine how magic functions as a trope in work on performativity and speech act theory, particularly in the works of J.L. Austin and William A. Covino.

The third section, corresponding to the Hebrew letter Vau , concentrates specifically on how practitioners apply the discursive field of initiation and magick to action, stressing negotiations with power in both ritual and political contexts. Chapter six more closely examines particular magickal practices and contemporary ritual traditions through an analysis of several ritual events. Here, I consider how ritual magick functions as a performative tool for the initiated self, creating what I call an “(oc)cult of personality” in which the practitioner dramatizes the simultaneous hiding and revealing of various identities within the ritual space. Chapter seven looks at how practitioners apply their magical tactics to their relations with the mundane world, particularly in the realm of activist politics. Here, I focus on political events, like the WTO protests in 2000, and various civil court cases surrounding religious freedom, especially with regards to the military and the prison system. The final section, consisting of chapter eight and 25 the conclusion, corresponds to the Hebrew letter Heh (final). Chapter eight presents the initiatory act itself as a culmination of the previously examined elements of language, textuality, history, magick, ritual, and politics. I analyze several initiation rituals, including those used by the Golden Dawn, the York rite of Freemasonry and my own, determining how initiation rituals act as performative sites for constructing the occult self and as tools for transmission of occult values. I discuss the role that secrecy plays in occult groups and initiations and the varying attitudes towards secrecy and initiation, especially in the seeming opposition between more traditional occultists and more politically minded practitioners of witchcraft. In this discussion I pay attention to how initiation crystallizes issues of power within magickal groups. Thus, the shape of the dissertation as a whole builds towards initiation, just as a candidate for initiation may read texts, learn history, engage in magickal practice, attend ritual, and become involved with community before he or she is deemed ready for full immersion into the mysteries through an initiation rite. The journey begins here.

Raising the Hoodwink

When a candidate wished to begin the process of initiation into the Golden Dawn, the late nineteenth-century British magical society, he or she would first be subjected to what the initiates referred to as the Neophyte Ritual. Former member Israel Regardie outlined this ritual and many others in his original publication about the specifics of the Golden Dawn’s practices.

This work, originally published in 1937 and simply titled The Golden Dawn , was the first time that the Order’s secret regimen of magical practice and study had been exposed to the reading public. Throughout the multi-volume text, Regardie provides what amounts to performance scripts for each of the major Golden Dawn initiation rites. Included in these scripts are set 26 designs for the temple, including placement of certain “actors,” with titles like hierophant and hegemon, as well as props, costumes, stage directions, and dialogue. Within the text, the dialogue often explains esoteric meanings for the props and costumes, utilizing complex imagery, references, and symbolism from a variety of sources, ranging from mystical

Christianity and kabbalah to Egyptian mythology. The officers of the Order also engage in elaborate gestures and movements throughout the space in patterns, known as circumambulations, and recite prayers and purifications.

In the introduction to the Neophyte ritual, Regardie describes the ritual in terms of a drama, associating the setting to a scene from the Egyptian Book of the Dead in which various gods measure the soul’s worthiness to enter the afterlife. In this context, the initiate is constructed as powerless, at the mercy of greater forces that guide him and challenge him:

“Thrice bound and hoodwinked, the seeker is braver than he knows, uninitiated and in ignorance, totally dependent on the surrounding balance of forces” (114). When the candidate is brought forth, he or she is robed with a rope wrapped three times around the waist and blindfolded, or

“hoodwinked.” The candidate is then led to various officers throughout the space, challenged and prompted at various times to make vows of secrecy or dedication. At the climactic part of the ritual, immediately before the Heirophant speaks the portentous charge “Long hast thou dwelt in

Darkness, Quit the Night and Seek the Day,” the officers remove the candidate’s hoodwink. The candidate is finally shown a complex series of symbols, accompanied by esoteric teaching and emphasized by certain dramatic spectacles, such as the turning of water to “blood,” as dictated by a particular chemical recipe in the instruction manuals for the rituals. Thus, the symbolic act of the candidate quitting the night and seeking the day is dramatized simply through the action of blindfolding and removing of the blindfold. The act of hoodwink removal is tantamount to a 27 particular kind of enlightenment, in which the candidate is urged to follow a path towards

communion with the Order’s notion of divinity or, as some practitioners would prefer, the

candidate’s higher self. Both Israel Regardie and his mentor, Aleister Crowley, refer to this

process as the Great Work, a term associated with alchemy, in which the dross of the candidate is

transformed to gold. 3 Yet this work must occur in secrecy, and the hoodwink itself symbolizes that secret process of concealment and revelation.

The use of the hoodwink is a common trope in Western initiation rites. A candidate for initiation into the York Rite of Freemasonry is similarly attired with a concealing blindfold and led through the space in a circular pattern (Duncan 28-33). 4 Since the founders of the Golden

Dawn were all Freemasons, the Masonic influence on the construction of the initiation rites is instantly recognizable (Gilbert 23). This trope certainly continues into contemporary practices. In my initiation into the Hermetic Order of Chicago, I was similarly blindfolded when I was presented to the officers of the rite. In these kinds of rites, the removal of the blindfold is the moment of incorporation, when the candidate is able to face his or her initiators, who welcome the neophyte into group, community, or religious order.

However, the defining act of hoodwink removal at the climax of the Golden Dawn

Neophyte ritual is not the only time the veil is lifted. Within the Neophyte ritual, the hoodwink is

3 The term “Great Work”, a translation of the phrase “magnum opus,” refers specifically to the alchemical process of transforming dross into gold. Regardie and Crowley were part of a long line of magical practitioners who applied the term to the metaphorical transformation of the individual, dating back to the Renaissance alchemists, philosophers and magical practitioners. Though the term has continually been a part of alchemical discourse, recent works also invoke the term. For instance, see David Goddard, The Tower of Alchemy: An Advanced Guide to the Great Work (York Beach, ME: Weiser Publications, 1999).

4 In the 1800’s Freemasonry was practiced as the French influenced “Scottish Rite” or the newer American “York Rite.” Both rites included the hoodwink. The information on the rite is taken from the text by “Malcolm C. Duncan.” The author’s name is almost certainly a pseudonym. Even though the publication has a date of 1980 attached, the book’s list of references on Freemasonry range from the 1840’s to the 1860’s, a time period when the York rite was at its height. 28 raised at several points to reveal certain symbols or to confront a particular officer to receive a

charge. The officers then replace the hoodwink, continually guiding the candidate through the

various steps of the rite and prompting him or her for the appropriate responses. Thus, the

performance dynamic of the rites, from the point of view of the main participant (the initiate) is

one of continual concealment and revelation. Secrets are revealed and then quickly hidden. This

performative move is the sleight-of-hand of stage magicians, the strategy of the chess master, the

willful sophistry of the rhetorician or politician. Regardie, a trained psychotherapist, claims that

the initiators intend these brief revelations to work on the subconscious of the candidate, so that

the information and symbolism “is perceived and noted and strikes the focal centre” ( Golden

Dawn 70). The action of concealment and revelation also reinforces the movement of knowledge and the source of power within an institutional structure such as the Golden Dawn, in which members receive more information as they progress through the grades.

The repeated act of concealing and revealing, then, constructs a particularly occult performance theory, especially when we consider how the term occultism specifically refers not just to hidden wisdom, but to its revelation. The transformation of the candidate's mental, psychological and spiritual state is the end goal of this efficacious rite and the transmission of esoteric knowledge and experience is the pathway to this transformation. Yet for this knowledge and experience to maintain its mystery, and for it to work on a deeper level than the conscious mind, it must be presented to the candidate in this fashion, as a trick, a performed illusion. This

“now you see it, now you don’t” dynamic crosses the line between stage magic and ceremonial magick, allowing for the fact that the amazed audience is an audience of one. The use of a

“hoodwink” suggests associations with sleight of hand trickery (in the sense of “being

29 hoodwinked,” the victim of a prank), even though this trick may ultimately be generative rather than merely manipulative. The act of concealment and revelation informs Michael

Taussig’s assertion that “magic is efficacious not despite the trick but on account of its exposure.

The mystery is heightened, not dissipated, by unmasking, and in various ways, direct and oblique, ritual serves as a stage for so many unmaskings” (“Viscerality” 222). The initiation rite is certainly a stage for unmaskings and, ideally, like the shaman’s apprentice that Taussig describes, the occult initiate will be fascinated by the initiatory process and seduced by the revelation of the mystery, enough to interest him in further study and practice, thus pursuing further initiatory degrees. Therefore, the dynamic of concealment and revelation is a key trope in the ritual performance that is initiation, and is crucial to the dramatic arc involved in the rite itself.

The raising of the hoodwink is a crucial move in the performance of initiation, establishing a pattern of concealing and revealing in which the candidate is seemingly at the mercy of his or her initiators, who offer knowledge and then obscure it. This performative operation acts as synecdoche, standing in not only for initiation itself, but also for the dynamic inherent to participation in occultism. By examining the discursive act of ritual initiation as a paradigmatic performance, my dissertation primarily seeks to articulate the performative language of occultism and magickal practice. In this work I demonstrate that occultism is fundamentally a performative operation, and that its engagements with issues of language, textuality, history, ritual and magick, and political activism are essentially concerned with and caught up in issues of performance, as formulated by the field of performance studies. Foremost among these issues is an acknowledgment of the constructed nature of most human activity, an emphasis on liminality, and a foregrounding of the body as a site of knowledge (Carlson 191). 30 Therefore, I establish how occult performances function as initiatory tools and channels for gnosis, and how these performances create an occultism that plays a prominent role in modern culture.

Occultism is concerned with performance in an obvious way, due to the fact that its most pervasive aspects are rituals, ritualized acts (such as divinations), and initiations, in which participants create theatre, often dressing up in elaborate costumes, wielding various props, chanting obscure liturgies, and acting in various roles determined by the rite. However, these rites are meant to be performative in another sense. They are meant to transform individuals’ physical and spiritual lives, to “create change,” and make things happen through magic.

Therefore, they are meant to be performative in the Austinian sense, as well. Historically, occultism has always been inescapably bound to the problematic notion of magic. Even a basic understanding of the concept of magic that anyone might have from children’s fairy tales is that to speak a magical spell will make something happen. By this definition, magic is performance, because individuals perform intentional acts within a ritualized context. This fairly accurately describes the performative statement, according to J.L. Austin: the utterance leads to its enactment. Or more specifically, it is the perlocutionary act that “achieves certain effects by saying something” (Austin 121). Accepting magic as efficacious involves the implicit assumption that your statement (spell) will be felicitous. For example, a phrase such as “So Mote

It Be” is a commonly used performative statement in Wiccan and Masonic rituals. Though it is one of general assent similar to an “Amen” in Catholic liturgy, some practitioners also understand it to have a vague but effective influence on their magickal acts and invocations. 5

5 Ronald Hutton explains that this phrase, Middle English for ‘so must it be,’ was commonly used in Masonic rites, and was subsequently taken up by Wiccan practice, along with other Masonic elements, like the pentagram, the dagger and elements of the initiation rite (55). 31 Magical performatives in the form of liturgical phrases and spells are paradigmatic of a

broader performative understanding of the universe that occultism employs. This performative

view of the universe extends beyond just the practice of ritual to the production of occult texts,

identities and representations. However, the act of initiation holds the pattern for all these occult

performances.

Modern Western anthropological discourse came to use the term “initiation” as a way to

describe so-called “rites of passage” conducted by both the “ancient” and the “primitive” Other,

strange tribes existing in other times and spaces. The term was applied equally to research on

ancient Greek and Egyptian civilization and to ethnographies on exotic peoples like the

Trobriand Islanders or the Azande, for instance. In Western civilization’s own ritual creations,

initiation was the name of rites associated with the developments of the Enlightenment and late

modernity, when esoteric organizations like Freemasonry began to solidify their role in society

as a pedagogical training ground for gentleman who wished to penetrate the veils of mystery

outside the bounds of mainstream religious experience. The actual rites developed by

Freemasonry and later occult societies like the Golden Dawn drew from a mythos based on

fantasies of ancient Egyptian, Hebrew, and Greek mystery traditions, as well as 17 th -century utopian Rosicrucian legends, creating the opportunity for a hybridized Western construction known as the occult initiate. The very notion of initiation and its ritual trappings has a history of pervading popular culture, from the university fraternity system to street gang activity, from conspiracy theory to countless narrative depictions in literature, television and film. Initiation has provided a potent image for ethnographers immersing themselves in their fieldwork, and indeed, a metaphor for academics being indoctrinated into their fields (Grimes, Marrying 47). Finally, it 32 is a particular current of modernity that penetrates beyond the esoteric organization and into

the most seemingly exoteric of civic structures and corporate entities.

It is this tendency for initiation as metaphor to overtake experiential analysis that

positions it, unsurprisingly, as an entry point to speak about and experience occultism. Initiation

is a basic component of Western occultism, a microcosmic part that often stands in for the whole

of esoteric practice. It is the esoteric operation that is most familiar to us, either through its

depiction in popular culture, as in the exaggerated fraternity initiation in the 1978 film Animal

House (“thank you sir, may I have another!”), or through our own experiences of joining a new group, such as a sports team, a club or an organization. Whether or not we recognized the experience as esoteric, spiritual, or transformative, we at least tended to acknowledge the intent behind such rituals: to assert a change in status, from outsider to insider or from a position of lower status to higher status, as in the conferring of an academic degree or a military rank.

Though in this dissertation I will be examining initiation specifically in an esoteric and spiritual context, it is not unlikely that an echo of these more secular rites will be heard. In fact, this similarity suggests a sort of everyday occultism that persists as part and parcel of our existence as social creatures. 6

Like the term magic, initiation is often used metaphorically in social and academic settings. But when practitioners of esoteric tradition invoke it, an actual ritual performance is often the result. But even there, the metaphorical mixes with the practical, and the spiritual, for that matter, in a certain kind of a performative alchemy. Practitioners often do not speak about

6 Even the most mundane groups in American society can have a ritualistic, occult-like element. In a class on occultism, one of my students related how her induction to the National Honors Society was accompanied by ritual robes and lighting of candles, which represented leadership.

33 initiation ceremonies as such, since many swear oaths of secrecy with boundaries that vary

depending on which part of the rite is the most hidden. But they do speak of initiation

experiences , events that conform to a certain kind of narrative in which the individual faces a

challenge and is irrevocably transformed by the ordeal. They speak of changing names,

identities, goals and directions in their lives, of becoming a new person. These narratives may be

a form of fantasy, in which the individual casts himself as the main character in a Campbellesque

myth of the hero who is out to slay the dragon, claim kingship or quest for the Holy Grail, as in the Arthurian legends. These stories, in fact, do lend Western initiation rites much of their imagery and ideology, just as more recent heroic stories like J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the

Rings or even J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series are also examples of possible initiatory templates based on contemporary mythology. However, the performance of these rites and practices may actually transform the individuals who perform them and even if there is nothing more to the proceedings than fanciful approaches to therapeutic goals, these rites have an impact.

Furthermore, initiation, performance and occultism are inextricably connected. Let us first perform some etymological magic on the word itself. Initiation . The chain of Latin roots

reaches back to inire (to go into, enter upon). We begin at initium (an entrance, a beginning) and

proceed to initiare (to originate, initiate). Our destination is initiationem (participation in secret

rites). In this brief etymology, we get a sense of beginnings, of origins, of starting a particular

action or event, a chain of events, of tradition, but with a touch of the mysterious, of secrecy. Yet

this secrecy implies both speaking and not speaking, since the term initiation in phonetics refers

to one of the two mandatory aspects of sound production in the human body, the other being

articulation. Allow me to articulate. In this context, initiation is the action by which airflow is

created through the vocal tract. So it is the act of creating speech, a speaking that at once must be 34 silenced when brought into the realm of ritual initiation, where individuals participate in secret rites, beginning their study of the ineffable, whether it be in the religious, esoteric, or communal sphere. To add a further level, the term initiation is also used in chemistry, indicating a chemical reaction that triggers one or more secondary reactions. So an initiation causes a chain reaction. It creates a process. It does something. And it does something through speech. It performs.

Ideally, initiation also transforms. It allows for a deeper negotiation between the known and the unknown, offering a seemingly privileged view of the universe to the worthy candidate.

This privileged view is at the heart of Western occultism, in which individuals and groups share secret knowledge about the universe with their initiates. Though it is a pervasive one, initiation is just one operation that constitutes occultism. Moreover, practices like initiation are basically a network of social actions that individuals perform in order to deepen their connections with their own consciousness, with each other and with an Other that they perceive as divine. This interaction with the hidden is a complex one, involving various methods of engagement, often concerned with the cautious transmission of knowledge and a practiced performance of concealing and revealing. However, it is not only occult knowledge and practice that is concealed and revealed but also the discourse of occultism itself. The identity of the constructed occult self is at the center of this performance of concealment and revelation.

This occult self is a crucial element of my own work, since I have spent many years constructing one of my own. My engagement with these practices has influenced my language to the extent that I now tend to interpret my own life experiences as a series of initiatory challenges.

Besides my participation in actual initiation rites, I have noticed that in conversations I have referred to experiences like marriage, bringing a child into the world and even writing this dissertation as initiations. Thus, my approach as both a practitioner and scholar, and my 35 awareness of the fluidity of these positions, significantly shape this work. Though I have studied magick as a practitioner since 1993, I received formal initiations in both Wiccan and

Hermetic traditions in 1998 and 2000, respectively. The theme of initiation recurs constantly in my personal narrative as it does for many practitioners, and indeed, many ethnographers. In fact, these initiations, among others, were performance events that determined my approach to occultism. 7 I have written about and from these experiences, which include participation, coordination, and facilitation of rituals, events, and workshops in the city of Chicago and at various festivals throughout the Midwest. Thus, I am one of a growing number of magickal practitioners who have entered the scholarly world, engaging in questions about insider research.

However, this dissertation is not primarily an ethnography. Though I do focus on my experiences with particular groups in Chicago, this is not an in-depth study of any one particular community, but rather an attempt to identify the performative tropes of occultism that apply in various magickal contexts. This task is complex for several reasons. First, not unlike the challenge of defining performance studies, the challenge of delimiting the notion of occultism is both daunting and ongoing. I examine definitions by those who consciously call themselves magickal practitioners, particularly in terms of how occultism relates to their practice. As we will see, practitioners, like the scholars who examine them, are constantly debating these definitions and distinctions. Principles of occultism and magic cannot be applied the same universally, and terms can mean different things to different cultures, traditions, and even communities (and individuals) within the same tradition. I will also trouble the definition of occultism further,

7 For example, my first year Ph.D. recital, a rite of passage required of all students in performance studies became an event that, for me personally, helped to elevate my status in the department. This performance, in fact, used a Western esoteric initiatory structure to tell the story of a friend’s experiences in prison and its reflection of my own battles with depression. Indeed, I came to see graduate school in particular as an initiatory experience itself. 36 questioning its connotation as something “other,” as in “otherworldly” or supernatural.

Accordingly, I look for what I can only call an occultism in the modernist and postmodernist

theories I cite. I also note where performative patterns in occultism resonate with those in

mundane social practices and institutions, including the academy.

Initiation rituals, as models of occult performance, are highly coded symbolic processes

that inculcate new members into the usually secret fold of a practicing group or community. The

heart of this ritual process is a performative act of “passing the charge,” in which the candidate

receives the group’s particular tradition through symbols, tools, liturgy or ritual gestures. Though

the charge can be an actual statement of responsibility, many practitioners interpret the term as

an intangible “energetic” experience, in which the candidate feels the psychophysical energy of

his initiators and the numinous force that supposedly works through them. Most importantly, however, the performative that the ritual enacts is one that states that the candidate is indeed initiated. The initiation ritual declares that the status of the new initiate has changed in the eyes of the group and in the perception of the numinous force. 8 In this sense, the initiation ritual

defines occultism as the revealing of occult secrets to the initiate, while at the same time

welcoming him into a group that is somehow separate or removed from the exoteric world. This

act of simultaneously hiding and revealing is one of the central performative tropes of occultism.

Of course, Western initiation is not a monolithic, unified tradition, but rather a

performative mode that wields both symbolic and actual power within the occult world. Despite

the fact that as a concept, initiation, like magic, is often used ahistorically and without thought to

8 Depending on their personal beliefs, or the accepted language of the group, practitioners refer to that numinous force as God, the gods, the Goddess, the Divine or simply, the universe.

37 cultural specificity, it functions as a potent metaphor for the transmission of mysterious

knowledge, an occult pedagogy that embodies the particular ideals and philosophies of Western

esotericism. Religious scholar Antoine Faivre describes transmission as “an esoteric teaching

that can or must be transmitted from master to disciple following a pre-established channel” in

which the initiate must be “attached to a tradition considered as an organic and integral ensemble

deserving respect” ( Access 14-15). This definition hints at initiation’s essential power dynamic, one we will explore throughout this text, involving an initiate’s association with a “master,” as well as the individual’s connection to a broader community and cultural tradition. The medium for transmission can often be the performance of an actual initiation rite. However, Arthur

Versluis has recently argued that in cases where actual initiatory lineages are absent, a fairly common occurrence in the West, literature and art serve as tools of esoteric transmission. In esoteric literature and art, the acts of reading and writing, creating and interpreting art, are themselves part of the initiation process. In a sense, esoteric literature and art are performative texts that offer the opportunity for active participation on the part of the reader/initiate in the process of gnosis. In later chapters, I will examine some of these textual processes and how they construct particular cultural and historical narratives within the broader performance dynamic of occultism.

As I define the performative and initiatory discourse of occultism, I am particularly concerned with three main performative tropes: the dynamics of concealment and revelation; creative analogy as an organizing principle, which can sometimes be codified according to the practice or highly individualized, and can be utilized for interpreting both mundane and mystical experience; and the use of histories, texts, and spaces to affect initiation, often through the production of indeterminacy. These tropes appear again and again in a multitude of occult 38 contexts, including historical and practical texts, initiation rituals, personal testimonies and my

own experience. I have attempted to construct a comprehensive map of the occult process that

travels through various occult territories, including the knowledge system that occultism reveals,

magickal practices that employ this system, and the mode of transmission for teaching these

practices. In order to examine these more overtly occult territories, I also identify the occult

aspects in the theoretical works I utilize. My reading of works by Foucault, Derrida, Adorno and

others will focus on their occult elements, and, as Michael Taussig has discovered with his

reading of anthropological texts, these works are often themselves occult texts with magical

language. Current ethnographies on British and American magickal communities also reveal

much about how scholarly discourse contributes to the occultism inherent in such topics.

In my use of performance studies as a discipline, I follow Jon McKenzie’s recent

characterization of performance studies as “a paradigm of knowledge” in which performance is

conceptualized “as the embodied enactment of cultural forces” (8) and as “an ensemble of

activities with the potential to uphold societal arrangements or, alternatively to change people

and societies” (30). McKenzie also points out that the particular challenge of cultural

performance is that of efficacy – performance as an effective agent for change. In this work, I

argue that this very definition of performance borrows from a particularly magickal discourse, by

way of anthropology, in which practitioners seek efficacy through the performance of magick

and ritual. The change referred to here is analogous to the notorious early twentieth-century

occultist Aleister Crowley’s dictum that magick is “the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with will” ( Magick xii). McKenzie reveals that it is this resistant and

transgressive potential for performance that informs the majority of performance studies, while

the normalizing function of performance is often ignored by performance studies scholars. 39 Magick and occultism deal with strikingly similar questions, as magickal practice can be

valorized as a potentially transgressive praxis and critiqued as an almost fascistic method of

control. In my dissertation, I will demonstrate that magickal practice, as performance,

continually challenges the binaries of either/or politics. Magick, like performance, is never fully

transgressive nor fully oppressive. Thus, recognizing magick as cultural performance allows us to define occultism as a discourse and locate it in discourse, to construct it as both an object of study and a method for study.

A salient example of these parallels is that both occultism and performance studies utilize initiation as a key performance model. McKenzie identifies Victor Turner’s notion of liminality, an elaboration of Arnold Van Gennep’s second stage of initiation, as the primary model for performance studies. McKenzie argues that liminality is so prominent a metaphor within the field of performance studies that he coins a somewhat paradoxical term for it: the liminal-norm. Note

McKenzie’s very conscious use of the initiation trope when he describes liminal rites as the exemplar for theorizing performance: “Even more than theater, rites of passage have provided

Performance Studies a metamodel for its own initiation as a discipline, its passage to paradigm”

(37). In this construct, the university itself is the site for ritual transformation, a trope he borrows from Michel Foucault’s essay, “Rituals of Exclusion.” 9 McKenzie further reminds us that

“cultural performance scholars have also theorized our own activities in terms of liminality, arguing that we operate in the interstices of academia as well as the margins of social structures and seek to reflect upon and transform both the academy and society at large” (36). According to

9 McKenzie explains: “the very same rituals which performance scholars have long cited in theorizing the efficacy of performance, Foucault cites to explain the university’s normative function within contemporary society” (51). He refers to Foucault Live (Interviews, 1966-84) . Trans. John Johnston. Ed. Sylvève Lotringer. New York: Semiotext(e), 1989, 66. 40 this somewhat romantic view, one that McKenzie critiques, performance studies as a discipline and performance studies scholars, then, are part of a ritualized operation of initiation.

Van Gennep’s model, as well as providing a paradigm for performance studies, is an essential tool for understanding Western occultism, not necessarily because it accurately reflects the reality of occultism, but because his theory directly influences the construction of modern occult practice. In this construct, the first stage entails a candidate’s separation from his or her social group, the second stage involves a period where the individual has no identity or affiliation

(an in-between, liminal state) and the third stage reintegrates the individual back into the social group, complete with a new identity or status. Originally writing in 1909, Van Gennep believed that the meaning of rites was very contingent upon their context and thus developed his sequential scheme. However, his universalizing tendency has often been applied uncritically to psychology and mythology, as in the works of Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell. Magickal practitioners have read these works and have in turn applied the model to their practice.

Initiations within Western occultism, from Freemasonry to Witchcraft, tend to display some variation of the three stage initiatory model, which is usually described to the candidate as a dying and rebirth. In my experience, a vast majority of Pagan rites, especially initiations, display at least a passing knowledge of Joseph Campbell’s “hero’s journey,” which features a dying and rising god archetype, not unlike James Frazer’s myth of the sacrificed god in The Golden

Bough .10 In turn, several traditions invoke ancient mystery religions like those that Frazer speculated upon as a template for their initiations. For instance, the Golden Dawn’s initiatory pattern is based on the myth of Osiris, slain and risen. Also, many Pagan groups utilize the story

10 For a brief discussion of Campbell’s contribution to theories of myth and ritual, see Bell (16). 41 of Persephone and Hades, the basis for the Eleusinian mysteries of Ancient Greece, as well as

the story of the descent of Inanna, a Sumerian tale of death and resurrection. 11

Since actual practice, or at least speculation on actual practice, influenced academic

theories on initiation, which in turn influenced modern practitioners’ initiation rituals, a feedback

loop is created when academics enter into magickal communities and initiate. Ethnographies on

magickal communities tend to apply an initiation paradigm more directly to scholarship and to

the initiatory path of the ethnographer. These scholars, operating in the fields of anthropology,

sociology, folkloristics, religious studies, and history, among others, have certainly increased the

exposure of Paganism and its practitioners, particularly in the academic world and popular

media. Scholars who choose to write about Pagan communities seem to constantly wrestle with

the problem of just how close they should get to the people they are studying. Characteristically,

unlike classic anthropology studying the primitive Other, contemporary ethnographers face the

challenge of representing others who have much in common with the ethnographer; many

subjects are well-educated, white, European-American, and middle class. These ethnographies

underline a salient quandary for researchers on Paganism and contemporary magical

communities. Building on the classic anthropological dilemma regarding the relationship

between the ethnographer and the object of study, these scholars struggle to maintain the

distance between their scholarly identity and their role as co-participants in a community not

entirely different from themselves.

11 Though not specifically for initiations, the Hermetic Order of Chicago used these particular myths as ritual dramas that served as an initiatory current for open, public rituals. Barbara Jane Davy also discusses the use of the Persephone and Inanna myths in Introduction to Pagan Studies (99-100). 42 These works include T.M. Luhrmann’s Persuasions of the Witch’s Craft: Ritual Magic

in Contemporary England, Helen Berger’s A Community of Witches: Contemporary Neo-

Paganism and Witchcraft in the United States, Susan Greenwood’s Magic, Witchcraft and the

Otherworld: An Anthropology, Sarah M. Pike’s Earthly Bodies and Magical Selves:

Contemporary Pagans and the Search for Community, Jone Salomonsen’s Enchanted Feminism:

The Reclaiming Witches of San Francisco, Sabina Magliocco’s Witching Culture: Folkore and

Neo-Paganism in America, and Nikki Bado-Fralick’s Coming to the Edge of the Circle: A

Wiccan Initiation Ritual. Ronald Hutton’s The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Pagan

Witchcraft, although a historical text, is also significant for the ways that he addresses these

issues. 12 Additionally, the entire anthology Researching Paganisms addresses the role of the ethnographer in researching contemporary paganism. These ethnographers describe varying levels of their personal involvement in the groups they studied. Some, like Luhrmann,

Greenwood, and Salomonsen mention their own initiations as part of this engagement. However, of all the aforementioned book-length studies, Bado-Fralick is the only scholar who self- identifies as Pagan (specifically Wiccan) from the outset.

Ethnographies on contemporary magickal practitioners tend to be continually caught up with issues of identity and disciplinary boundaries. However, these are not just questions of scholarly objectivity. For both the ethnographer and the practitioners being studied, the establishment of insider/outsider boundaries is an essential issue within a discourse of initiation.

Ethnography itself, particularly when it addresses performance, becomes an example of an initiatic discourse. As a performance studies scholar and a practitioner, I find it necessary to

12 Interestingly, all these ethnographers are women and the one historian, Ronald Hutton, is male. 43 address these issues of participant/observation further through a performance lens, while

explicitly placing them within an initiatic framework.

Path of the Ethnographer

One of the earliest and best-known scholarly anthropological approaches to contemporary

Western ritual magic is Tanya Luhrmann’s Persuasions of the Witch’s Craft (1989). Luhrmann’s infiltration of the British magickal scene of the mid-1980s and the resultant consequences of her actions make for an iconic tale of ethnographer initiation that fully employs the dynamic of concealment and revelation. Her highly problematic work provides the opportunity to discuss a wide range of performance issues within ethnography, particularly in regards to studying magickal communities. Central to this discussion is the role of the ethnographer vis-à-vis the community being studied, the centrality of belief to these interactions and the concomitant position of ritual, especially initiation, and the ways that both the researcher and the researched engage their varying understandings of performance.

Luhrmann was able to hide in plain sight within the communities she studied, claiming to be “one of the few anthropologists that could not be distinguished from their field” (17). This is mostly due to similarities in ethnicity and class between academics and magickal practitioners. 13

For her work, Luhrmann became deeply involved with England’s urban Pagans and ceremonial

magicians, even to the point of being initiated into several groups (65). Accordingly, Luhrmann’s

experiences as participant/observer led her to conclude with a significant critique of past work on

magic, stating that “When the anthropologist approaches magic, he fails to see it in its sensual,

13 Folklorist Sabina Magliocco notes that many practitioners have graduate degrees themselves ( Witching Culture 62). 44 experiential context . . . ” (349). Yet, for all this, Luhrmann still focuses mainly on issues of belief and why otherwise rational persons would practice something as strange as magical ritual.

One of her main conclusions, which is also one of the most controversial, is her concept of

“interpretive drift”: the “slow, often unacknowledged shift in someone’s manner of interpreting events as they become involved with a particular activity” (312). Primarily, she uses this concept both to explain her assimilation into these groups and to theorize how an individual might take on the seemingly irrational beliefs associated with contemporary Witchcraft.

Not surprisingly, she reveals at the end of her study that she never fully took the leap to the other side of the insider/outsider equation, despite what seems like a significant personal struggle. Describing her relation to the magical groups she socialized with and apparently joined,

Luhrmann confesses:

The only reason I continued to think of myself as an anthropologist, rather than as a

witch, was that I had a strong disincentive against asserting that rituals had an effect upon

the material world. . . . The very purpose of my involvement – to write an observer’s text

– would have been undermined by my assent to the truth of magical ideas. . . .

Throughout my time in magic, whenever I felt magical power inside the circle, or wanted

to say that a ritual had “worked,” I chalked up the event as an insight into the field. (320-

In the midst of magical rituals that Luhrmann claims had a strong effect on her, she still clings to traditional participant/observer notions and wishes to focus on the question of why seemingly rational people take part in such a strange practice, which she attempts to answer through her notion of interpretive drift. Throughout her text, Luhrmann uses this concept to describe how 45 magickal practitioners rationalize irrational activities and convince themselves of the efficacy

of their practice.

Ronald Hutton, who investigated the whole matter as part of the research for his

groundbreaking history of modern Pagan witchcraft, The Triumph of the Moon , contends that it

was this concept of interpretive drift that most rankled with the communities Luhrmann studied,

since it implied that they were merely the victims of self-delusion. Furthermore, Hutton reports,

Lurhmann’s subjects felt betrayed and belittled by the fact that this research, including her

initiations, mainly served to publish her book and acquire tenure at her university ( Witches 262).

And if there was any doubt, Luhrmann later confirmed suspicions in a 1997 piece for U.S. News

& World Report , in the wake of the Heaven’s Gate incident, admitting that she went native merely to publish a book: “I am not now a practicing magician. This was something I did for my dissertation” (35). 14 And she has not written on the topic since. This problematic, hit-and-run anthropology has made Luhrmann a divisive figure among both scholars and practitioners, whose sense of betrayal was compounded by the fact that she published knowledge that she was only able to obtain as an initiate (Wallis 205). Since the publication of Luhrmann’s work, scholars and ethnographers, particular those interested in studying British Paganism, have had to contend with it and the problems it has raised. Hutton notes that when a fellow researcher,

Joanne Pearson, approached a British magickal community, she was asked “You’re not going to do another Tanya on us, are you?” ( Witches 261). Despite the fact that Luhrmann’s work opened

14 Further, Hutton describes Luhrmann’s review of his own book, in which she refers to Witchcraft as a “small and in some ways irrelevant” religion, despite the fact the she gives the book a good review. Hutton seems to think that this would have been an opportunity for Luhrmann to redeem herself, since the academic attitude on objectivity in anthropology had relaxed somewhat in the years since her original faux-pas. Unfortunately, according to Hutton, her statements, along with an incorrectly cited census number of practicing witches, resulted in “literally belittling the people who welcomed her and helped build her career” and “represented an attempt to consign them to the margins and to mystification once more in the face of all my efforts to the contrary” ( Witches 284). 46 up many possibilities for studying the heretofore unresearched realm of contemporary

Paganism, and was one of the first academic works to take contemporary magickal practice

seriously, practitioners had a hard time trusting academics again.

Yet at issue here is more than just a betrayal of trust. Rather, debate about Luhrmann’s

work contains strong implications about the role of performance in such interactions. Hutton

questions whether Luhrmann’s actions at the time were actually unethical, pointing out that this

kind of behavior was consonant with a significant trend of 1980’s anthropology. By this point,

participant/observation was valued as a successful method of doing ethnography. Going native

was no longer a taboo, as long as the researcher was able to still “think” like a scholar and return

to the safety of the academic tribe. Hutton associates this strategy with “an actor taking on a

part” effectively “turn[ing] the researcher into a form of impostor, an undercover agent for a

different culture who acted out membership of a group before leaving it and throwing off the

disguise.” The unfortunate implication of all this was that “it retained the assumption that the

beliefs and attitudes of the people studied were valueless in themselves, and that the

anthropologist would accordingly suffer no loss in shaking them off at the end of the project”

(Witches 286). Despite describing some intense personal experiences while training in magickal practice, Luhrmann constantly attempts to reassure her academic audience with statements like

“I am no witch, no wizard, although I have been initiated as though I were ” (18, emphasis mine).

Ultimately, Lurhmann’s solution to the dilemma of academic objectivity is one of performance.

She “performs” as if she were an initiate.

And it is this pejorative sense of performance, indicating inauthenticity and dishonesty,

that most angered her initiators and magickal colleagues, who assumed her interest and her 47 initiations were genuine, even though she had warned them they were being studied. 15 Perhaps

the most disturbing issue for Luhrmann’s interlocutors was that her “performance” could be seen

as devaluing their own practices, calling into question the authenticity of their own initiation

rites, or even the initiation process itself. Or perhaps, if initiation is intended to transform the

initiate so that her life takes a new direction, Luhrmann angered her initiators not because her

initiations failed, but because they succeeded, just not in the way they intended. The group that

Luhrmann actually initiated into was not the British magickal scene, but rather the elite secret

society of tenured Ivy League academics. I believe that if Luhrmann had been more conscious of

this process and had acknowledged it, she might have garnered more sympathy for her actions.

Unlike Luhrmann, Hutton is aware of the role of initiation in academia, admitting that,

despite his pagan upbringing, the only true initiation he ever received was as an academic: “it is

with only a limited measure of irony that I regard the academy as the greatest mystery religion of

the modern Western world, with its imposing shrines, its three degrees of initiation with their

gorgeous robes, its long, hidden processes of training, and its claim to place its initiates to some

measure in contact with the truths of the universe” ( Witches 270). Throughout my own

experiences in graduate school I noted similarities to initiation processes, complete with our own

“interpretive drift” of sorts, which included internalizing certain vocabulary and ideology. 16

Accordingly, I tend to acknowledge Ronald Grimes’ notion that education is a performance event, a rite of passage and “our society’s most sustained effort at initiation”( Marrying 45). It is

15 Luhrmann admits she was “was rather relieved when people forgot what I had so carefully told them” about her researcher identity (17). Hutton, assessing the situation with Luhrmann’s own research subjects, claims “What to her appeared to be forgetfulness on the part of others appeared to many of those people – as I was made aware by them – to be a genuine change of heart on her part” ( Witches 263).

16 Ultimately, however, “interpretive drift” can apply to any area of specialized knowledge or practice. 48 difficult to study magickal and initiatory traditions and not see an initiatic element to higher

education. In the case of the ethnographer, the initiation paradigm is even more pronounced as

the researcher continuously struggles with her role in the researched community and how far she

should adapt to their beliefs and practices.

This struggle has long been a part of anthropological discourse and in the time since

Luhrmann’s project has received serious attention by ethnographers and researchers in various

fields. For instance, in the early 1990s, Edith Turner, who was part of a growing trend in

anthropology to take non-rational beliefs of non-western cultures seriously, called for “radical

participation” in practices such as trance possession (28). Similarly, Katherine Ewing lamented

Lurhmann’s refusal to believe as a “blind spot” representative of anthropologists who “have

prevented themselves from transcending the contradictions embedded in a situation in which the

imposition of one’s own mode of discourse interferes with the project of representation” (571).

Further, Ewing argues, the ethnographer may even learn something valuable about herself from

her subjects. Ronald Hutton points out that several scholars from this period promoted their own

form of interpretive drift but, unlike Luhrmann, advocated it as a way for a researcher to “drift

away” from mainstream, rationalist assumptions and towards the unique insights of the group

being studied ( Witches 287). 17

Though the field of anthropology has certainly come a long way in this matter, other

fields like religious studies still struggle with it (Bado-Fralick 6). In assessing the Luhrmann

situation, Douglas Ezzy maintains that the most disturbing part of her work was not her betrayal

of trust, but her “methodological atheism,” a refusal to identify with her subjects for institutional

17 Hutton also notes the importance of feminist ethnography to this critique, especially works by Narayan, Behar and Abu-Lughod. 49 reasons (118). However, it is this very stance that has been recommended in the recent field of

Western Esotericism, an area of religious studies. Wouter Hanegraff, one of the prominent voices

in this field, maintains that “the principal theoretical tool to safeguard scientific legitimacy in this

situation is the distinction between emic and etic” ( The New Age 6). Based on the views of

Hanegraff and other scholars in western esotericism, Christopher Lehrich articulates the position of scholars who wish to combat the suspicion that they are apologists, apparently a common accusation in the wake of Frances Yates’ work on Hermeticism in the 1970s. 18 One of these

positions is a refusal of “any identification with the objects of study,” one which Lehrich readily

admits does not take into account a century of debate within anthropology, even though the field

of Western Esotericism claims to be interdisciplinary (Lehrich 6). 19

Yet Antoine Faivre, one of the pioneers of Western Esotericism, has argued that the field

has argued for “transdisciplinarity,” a position that I believe reflects what performance studies

can offer. He claims:

while multidisciplinary thinking remains horizontal, and interdisciplinarity consists in

identifying, in bringing to light, certain possibilities of transfers of method from one

discipline to another, transdisciplinarity answers to three criteria, each independent but in

interrelationship: the idea that several levels of reality can exist, the activation of forms of

18 Since Yates is considered the cornerstone of current studies in western esotericism, Hanegraff comments on accusations weighed against “religionist” scholars who uncritically took up Yates to further “countercultural agendas” in “Beyond the Yates Paradigm: The Study of Western Esotericism Between Counterculture and New Complexity,” Aries 1, 1 (2001): 5-37. Quoted in Lehrich, “Discipline and Interdiscipline,” 3.

19 At a recent conference for the American Academy of Religions, where Lehrich delivered this paper with Hanegraff in the audience, I found just as many tensions as similarities between Western Esotericism and Pagan Studies, two fields that should have had much more in common. My impression was that Western Esotericism tended to de-emphasize actual practice in favor of historical and scientific rigor, seeing Pagan Studies as a field lacking objectivity with regards to practitioners, while Pagan Studies tended to see Western Esotericism as overly positivistic, patriarchal and somewhat archaic. Another part of my agenda is to reveal incorrect assumptions about this disciplinary dichotomy between Western Esotericism and Pagan Studies. 50 logic that are not classical (nonbinary); finally, the idea that the subject is to be found

placed in the very center of his or her own research. (xxx, emphasis mine)

Transdisciplinarity efficiently sums up the utility of a performance studies approach to the study of the performative and political aspects of ritual magic. In regards to the experiential nature of ritual magic, several levels of reality do often coexist. Ritual magic immediately affects the practitioners within the practice itself in nonrational ways. Furthermore, practitioners often do apply the structure of ritual magic to their everyday lives and their notions of identity, to their sense of community and activism, and to their reading and interpreting of popular culture.

Recently, Susan Greenwood has argued that magickal practitioners come to believe in magic not because of socialization factors like interpretive drift, but rather through genuine spiritual experiences with a perceived “otherworld.” Though she contends that these otherworldly experiences are shaped and framed by “this-worldly” social processes and have consequences in this world, acknowledgement of the perceived reality of the otherworld is crucial to Greenwood’s thesis. In fact, according to Greenwood, this is the crucial factor missing from Luhrmann’s analysis which “has not taken the magicians’ ontological reality of the otherworld seriously, because it does not fit into her explanatory framework” (42). Douglas Ezzy supports Greenwood’s thesis, not because he necessarily believes in the otherworld himself, but because “Magical encounters are experienced as real and have real consequences” and that “this way of interpreting magical experiences does not require belief by the researcher in the particular magical reality; it simply requires an acceptance by the researcher of the reality of the experience for the Witch” (121).

51 Like many of the other essays in Researching Paganisms , Ezzy questions the utility of

Luhrmann’s brand of methodological atheism, particularly with regard to interpretive drift.

Melissa Harrington, for instance, boldly claims that “‘Interpretive drift’ neatly sums up not

Witchcraft, not cognitive nor anthropological theory, but Tanya Luhrmann’s own interpretation of her own journey into the esoteric community in London” (75). Harrington’s assertion perfectly reflects my own impressions when encountering Luhrmann’s work. Even though

Luhrmann ostensibly uses interpretive drift to explain how people take on magical beliefs and practices, the concept more adequately explains the process of a researcher assimilating into the group she is researching. It is certainly true that some magickal practitioners go through an adjustment process in which they learn to accept seemingly irrational beliefs. Yet Luhrmann misses the possibility that group practice may simply help individuals articulate and codify strong personal experiences that they have had on their own. 20 In other words, many practitioners are already drawn to magic because of their experiences and not merely for curiosity.

Luhrmann’s struggles with assimilation, role-playing, subjectivity and objectivity set the stage for subsequent research into contemporary magickal communities. Ronald Hutton acknowledged that although his work was not ethnographic as such but historical, he was forced to deal with his own positionality within the British Pagan community. In his main study, The

Triumph of the Moon , Hutton shies away from saying anything about his own identity with regards to his subject matter. Though writing a historical survey, Hutton acknowledges help and

20 Similarly, Loretta Orion, in another early ethnography of Pagan communities, Never Again the Burning Times , notes that for most Pagan practitioners “the predisposing factor is personal experience, such as an unusual rapport with nature, or being subject to prophetic insights or a deep uneasiness about truths that are self-evident to others. In this case, persuasion is of the nature of confirmation, or explanation, rather than conversion to a new belief” (53). 52 insight from various practitioners, emphasizing the paradoxical problem of writing about mystery religions whose very nature is that of secrecy. 21 He admits that his book lacks both reactivity and reflexivity, in other words, that he is both affecting the group he is studying and that his own experiences affect the outcome of his study. In a sincerely honest moment, Hutton confesses that he had written such a section into his conclusion, but, after much sleeplessness, had decided to remove it: “Many readers would probably have found them [the cut pages] to be the most interesting part of the whole work; but they proved to be too personal, and too painful, for me, and left me feeling too exposed” (xi). 22 Unlike Luhrmann, Hutton seems to be very conscious of the step he is not taking, and, indeed, it seems to fit his purposes and aid his work.

Hutton confirms this in a later essay, entitled “Living with Witchcraft,” published in both his own Witches, Druids and King Arthur anthology (2003) and in the Researching Paganisms anthology. Here, Hutton relates some of the challenges and trials involved in legitimizing contemporary Pagan history within the British academy (including the issues around Luhrmann).

He also acknowledges but provides little detail about his own Pagan (but not Wiccan) upbringing: “This background meant that I would never have the classic experience of the anthropologist, of entering a society or sub-culture from the outside and having to familiarise

21 To address the issue of secrecy he sets up several ground rules. The first maintains anonymity except in the cases of published authors, while the second refrains from quoting ritual texts, even those published and, as an extension, to avoid quoting from unpublished material at all. Hutton intends these rules to respect the secrecy of the groups he is studying, which, it must be noted, are almost exclusively English. Further, his rules “have disqualified [him]self from providing precisely those carefully described, deeply analysed accounts of group behaviour upon which anthropology and sociology commonly depend. I hope at the same time to demonstrate how much history can still be written about them” (x).

22 Hutton does not mention his personal connections in his book. However, as a way of defending him against Wiccan critics who accuse him of errors based on outsider status, the well-known Wiccan author and NPR correspondent Margot Adler tells us that Hutton has had “a long history with at least two British Wiccan traditions” (Margot Adler, “A Time for Truth,” Beliefnet (25 September 2000). Online. . 53 myself with its ways. Nor would I ever have the shock or thrill of a religious conversion

experience, or have to struggle with the reputed problem of how far to ‘go native’; I had grown

up native” ( Witches 269). However, immediately after his admission, Hutton emphasizes his

initiation into the academy as being the most central to his identity. Throughout his essay, Hutton

continues to maintain the importance of appearing neutral, as it serves his role as an information

bridge between the Pagan and academic communities, to “still be of genuine benefit to the

people whose history I was studying.” His commitment to provide research information to

Pagans and dispel misconceptions and prejudices among non-Pagans is what helps him avoid

being seen as “doing another Tanya.” (274).

Helen Berger, in her ethnographic study A Community of Witches (1999), a much more focused work than Luhrmann’s, decided to take a different approach. Rather than become an initiate, she stakes out her identity as a researcher immediately. Though she is aware that her outsider status prevented her involvement in certain activities and knowledge, she claims it as an advantage, since she was “often privy to both sides of disputes that developed among groups or between individuals” (xvii). Though still not a practitioner, Berger has maintained healthy and friendly relations with the various communities she has studied. Similarly, Sarah Pike was able to remain a non-initiate, but mostly because the sites for her research are the large, open festivals, whose attendees are already an eclectic mix of practitioners and outsiders. In the preface to Earthly Bodies, Magical Selves (2001), she explains that, as in Luhrmann’s case, her

researcher identity eventually was forgotten among the festival community, noting “My role as

participant-observer, then, was problematized by my invisibility. I found the boundary between

insider and outsider slipping away, even while in my mind I tried to shore it up” (xv). Later, she

tells us that this slippage of identities was more a problem for her than for her subjects, claiming 54 that “When Neopagans forgot I was an academic and revealed themselves to me, I believe that

I gained insights that would not have been possible if the attendees were constantly reminding themselves that I was there to study them” (xvi). Here, Pike admits that the line between participant and observer is an academic construction and, further, attributes her realization of this construction through her own hiddenness . Pike’s findings seem to invoke a particular anthropological trope: that of the researcher hidden in the shadows, silently observing the practitioners. At these festivals, the practitioners are the visible norm and the researcher is the hidden Other, an intriguing reversal from the usual occult scenario in which practitioners are mysterious and hidden. However, this hiddenness is in plain sight, since Pike actively participated in open social gatherings and was not part of a specifically initiatory setting like

Luhrmann.

Outside of a festival setting, as researchers become increasingly aware of the effect their presence has on the groups they are studying, this trope of hiddenness proves invariably untenable. Jone Salomonsen, in Enchanted Feminism , her study of Reclaiming, the San

Francisco-based feminist Witchcraft collective, presents a fascinating incident that serves as an example of an ethnographer who cannot become invisible. While participating in a ritual, she decided to surreptitiously record parts of the event. 23 When she was caught in the act, the group confronted her over her wrongdoing. Salomonsen describes her agonizing embarrassment at

23 At most ritual events, celebrants frown upon recording or photography, especially without permission. This is due to both desires for anonymity and a feeling that the recording disrespects the practitioners and the event, even to the point that electronic devices are energetically disruptive. Even at many festivals, including Starwood, there is a policy that forbids such activities without the express condition that all individuals have given permission. However, at such large events, it is difficult to police and often individuals who violate the rule are tapped on the shoulder and reminded. During one particular incident, I remember someone videotaping the drummers at the main evening event. This so angered one of the lead drummers that he explicitly refused to play when the camera was on him. Of course, all this depends on the location and the individuals involved. Some circles have absolutely no problem with photography and other recording devices. Also, many speakers at these events have no problem with individuals recording their talks. 55 having to publicly explain to her circle members what she had done and outlines the entire process she underwent as part of addressing the perceived breach to the community.24

Surprisingly, despite the shame she felt under the scrutiny of the members, Salomonsen claims that she was fully supported throughout the experience, learned a valuable lesson and even strengthened her ties within the community. Though the Reclaiming members attributed their anger over the incident to a breach in ethics, in which Salomonsen placed her desires over the needs of the community, I would argue that what made this incident so dramatic to the collective was how it “outed” Salomonsen as something Other, a researcher and, for a brief moment, not one of them . Salomonsen certainly did not hide the fact that she was a researcher when she joined the group, but it is this incident that renders her ultra-visible to the community, not only as an individual who did not belong, but also as an ethnographer.

Thus, the incident clearly places her back on the other side of the participant/observer equation. The group process is essential to both Salomonsen and the community, because it ultimately reintegrates her back into the community. The reintegration was so complete that not only did Salomonsen remain with the community, she received an initiation from them some years later, even though she originally did not seek it. In fact, one of Salomonsen’s fellow circle members rightly interprets the incident itself as an initiation, a kind of death and rebirth (121).

One might speculate that this initiatory incident was essential to the actual initiation years later.

During the incident, what was previously hidden and occult, Salomonsen’s outsider identity, is

24 Magical groups, likely inspired by Reclaiming’s example, are increasingly following a group therapy model in order to deal with conflicts within the group. This can be highly successful or it can fail miserably depending on the wisdom and experience of its facilitators. The Hermetic Order of Chicago employed, to varying degrees of success, a similar group process during its existence, borrowing ideas from Hakomi, a therapeutic modality originated by Ron Kurtz in the mid-1970s (www.hakomiinstitute.com). 56 revealed. It is this brief moment of revelation that stands as a liminal initiatory moment, in

which both the initiate and the community must work to reintegrate the individual and reestablish

the integrity of the community.

This incident clearly influences Salomonsen’s strong arguments about the engagement of the

ethnographer with her subjects. She critiques the participant/observer equation in which the

ethnographer is encouraged to “go native” behaviorally but not cognitively, claiming “the main

reason it is not enough to conduct fieldwork from such a normatively chosen ‘outside’ position is that, in Witches’ rituals, covens and classes, there is no outside where an observer can literally put herself. Regarding the practice of modern mystery religions, you are either in, or you are not there at all” (17). 25 Here, Salomonsen points to the thin veils between participant and observer that scholar/practitioners continually question. Further, she advocates a “method of compassion” in which “belief is taken seriously, both cognitively and emotionally . . . but [is] necessarily critical since it cannot be operative without continual assessments and evaluations” (18).

According to Salomonsen, this method leaves behind the anthropological desire to gain access to secrets and opens the anthropologist to the possibility that they may be personally affected by the study. To make this point, she asserts “if religious initiation is accepted entirely against one’s own beliefs or solely in order to publish secret knowledge, the act is incompatible with the ethics embedded in a method of compassion” (18). This method, therefore, represents a different kind of occultism, distinct from the typical anthropological approach still haunted by colonialism, in which secrets are fetishized for their own sake. The ethnographer’s experiences, what she undergoes with her subjects during her study, have now become the unknown occult aspect. As

25 This is a common claim among researchers into contemporary magick. Hutton points out that Favret- Saada, commenting on her 1978 study of traditional bewitchment beliefs in the French countryside, says much the same thing (qtd. in Witches 286), as does Sabina Magliocco when describing her participation in Pagan rituals (11). 57 we will see in later chapters, this very approach is not unlike how contemporary practitioners characterize the occult initiation experience itself.

At its core, initiation is about consciously and performatively reifying the boundary between insiders and outsiders through ritual. When ethnographers initiate, they intentionally trouble the boundaries between researcher and practitioner, and consequently, between the magickal world and the academic world. Recently, Pagan scholars have followed trends in anthropology by questioning the insider/outsider dichotomy. Sabina Magliocco critiques the static categories of insider and outsider because “they presume identity to be fixed and essential, rather than the shifting, negotiated, contextual construction we now know it to be.” Her perspective as an ethnographer is not a fixed position, she argues, but rather one that “contain[s] within one body multiple, simultaneous frames of reference with which to interpret experience, and [is] able to shift easily from one to the other” (15). Nikki Brado-Fralick, a religious studies professor at the University of Iowa and a Wiccan priestess, also points out the assumptions of univocality on both sides of the insider/outsider equation. This assumption is certainly false not only because of the multiplicity of conflicting voices within the academy, but because “insiders also express varying perspectives and disagree among themselves as least as much as scholars do.” She argues, “Rather than a single, unitary voice or perspective, the terms insider and outsider conceal an entire realm of discourse engaged in by a multitude of shifting voices and perspectives in negotiation or even in contestation with one another” (5).

Similarly, Sarah Pike questions “the assumption that knowledge either lies within ‘us’ or

‘them’ rather than in the interstices of our relationships” (“Gleanings”102). In her essay in

Researching Paganisms , Pike recounts how she slipped back and forth between unselfconsciously participating and academically analyzing her experiences. Significantly, she 58 reaches an insight that I also was highly aware of early in my own work. That Pagans do the same thing . They are self-reflexive and even though they may forget themselves while performing a ritual, they tend to analyze and narrativize their experiences afterwards

(“Gleanings” 108). I would further argue that, even though it might not be apparent to someone watching ritual activities, this can happen during ritual as well. It certainly happened to me, and through conversations with my magickal colleagues, I learned that I was not alone. 26

When I participate in rituals, I am both participant and observer, even if one role tends to take over depending on how present I am in my experience. In my work with the Hermetic

Order, I had several conversations with experienced individuals who were also able to participate in the rites fully, while at the same time being able to offer critique and suggestions after the rite is over, when such observations are appropriate. Unless the rite calls for extremely focused trance work, I am usually aware which individuals or moments “work” or not during a ritual and have ideas afterwards about how to make improvements, just like any stage performer or director might. Further, strict insider/outsider boundaries tend to reify binary oppositions within research.

For instance, Helen Berger assumes that insiders are always taking sides on issues and that objectivity is only possible from the far outside (xviii). In fact, one can be an insider of a tradition, but still be aware of the many sides of conflict possible in that tradition. My status in the Hermetic Order of Chicago as a ceremonial magician and a researcher and my festival

26 Curiously, Susan Greenwood seems to have missed this point. Despite her attempts to differentiate between her study and Lurhmann’s, Greenwood makes a statement about her identity that curiously echoes Luhrmann: “Even though I participated fully in magical experiences I could never totally become a magician. I could never switch off the constant observation and questions in the back of my mind, and I soon learnt that it was not acceptable to question too much – emotions, rather than rational thought, were given priority” (15). Though I certainly cannot speak for Greenwood’s experience in England, this has never been the case in any group I have joined or witnessed. On the contrary, questions are often encouraged. Whenever I have witnessed someone being shut down because of questions, it was always about the attitude of the questioner and the method of asking, rather than because of content or because questioning itself was not welcomed. 59 attendance sometimes offered me a neutral seat in conflicts between Wiccan groups.

Although I may not be a member of these groups, I can certainly speak their language and am familiar with the foundations of their knowledge. Insider/outsider status can never be a simple binary opposition when dealing with the complexities of magickal communities.

However, some scholars do not feel that initiation is necessary to produce good research.

While Graham Harvey regards the academic bias that magickal practitioners should not study their own religions as “academically foolish,” given the number of Christian, Jewish and Muslim scholars who unproblematically write on their faiths, he also promotes a third position besides insider and outsider. Harvey seems to support Berger and Pike’s non-initiatory position with his notion of ethnography as “guesthood,” which he calls “a truly phenomenological approach, acknowledging that the researcher engages with particularities, makes a difference by just being there, and should accept the responsibility entailed in dialogue and relationships” (253).

Similarly, Robert Wallis warns that if insider scholarship becomes too pervasive “its foregrounding of plurality, multivocality, and difference would be compromised – it would cease to be queer and gain insights from a standpoint which is in opposition to the norm, with the consequence that it might then misrepresent Pagan voices as homogenous, not discursive” (207).

Nancy Ramsey, a scholar/practitioner who promotes insider scholarship, also cautions insiders to

“step outside of their group to explore objectively both who they are and what they study.

Insiders’ biases can lead to insight or error” (B8). In conversations with my colleagues in Pagan

Studies, we have determined that the best course of action for the future of Pagan studies is to allow for a multiplicity of voices, both practitioners and non-practitioners. We support the unique characteristics and information vital to both positions, while at the same time acknowledging these positions as neither static nor monolithic. 60 These changes in the role of the ethnographer are reflective of the changes in

practitioner attitudes towards initiation as being a more porous and fluid performance event. In

fact, the very notion of separating subject and observer seems antithetical to the religious

precepts of a magical practice like Wicca, the subject of many of these ethnographies. Starhawk,

a prominent Wiccan priestess, feminist activist, and author, in Dreaming the Dark: Magic, Sex,

and Politics , offers the spiritual world view of immanence as a strong political option, in which no one and nothing are ever “out of context.” She opposes immanence to the Western notion of transcendence, in which God is removed from daily life and the world, “above,” looking down

from heaven. Starhawk associates this removal with patriarchy and hegemony. In contrast,

immanence is the view that the divine (specifically, the Goddess, the feminine force of nature

and divinity) is present in both living and non-living things, in all humanity, and in everyday actions. 27 Therefore, a divine immanence links all things, so that one small action can have consequences on a large scale. For instance, an individual would be acutely aware of the results of a particular action, as in Phyllis Curott’s example, “you’d push a rock off a cliff to save your dog, but you would not pollute a river to make money” ( Witch Crafting 124). This transcendence/immanence binary is incredibly flawed, mostly due to Starhawk’s ahistorical approach to immanentalism, a concept adhered to by Christian occult philosophers who more than likely would represent the patriarchy in her worldview. 28 This dichotomy also ignores the

27 Similarly, in her recent book Witch Crafting, best-selling author Phyllis Curott describes an interview she took part in with a rabbi and a priest, in which her colleagues describe God as a potter. To them, worshipping the pot (the earth) would be idolatry, while Curott maintained the notion of God would not be removed from the pot (34).

28 B.J. Gibbons stresses how Hermeticism and Theosophy, as representative of occult philosophy, engendered a shift from transcendentalism to immamentalism (11). 61 concepts of transcendence in the very religion she practices. However, the currency of

Starhawk’s theories is located more in how she puts them into practice.

Starhawk further expands the idea of immanence to personal, political responsibility for an individual’s immediate environment and daily life, as well as for large-scale political actions like protesting a nuclear plant. She emphasizes “immanence is context, and so the individual self can never be seen as a separate, isolated object. It is a nexus of interwoven relationships, constantly being shaped by the relationships it shapes. Integrity also means integration – being an integral and inseparable part of the human biological community” (37). Therefore, this particular religious belief about the relationship between the individual and God/dess determines a code of ethics and integrity based on everything, living and non-living, being connected in some way. Not only is immanence a strong option to engage the micropolitical, it is a way of experiencing the world.

Thus, when this worldview is applied to scholarship, it can only eschew a top-down approach to ethnography like Lurhrmann’s. Her admission that she ignored non-academic insights she gained through participation reveals a significant lacuna in her work. The refusal to fully experience and embody magical practice denies Luhrmann’s place in Starhawk’s matrix of immanence where the ethics and politics of magic function. Her work is ultimately stranded on the slash between participant and observer, where she is neither fully one nor the other. Further, her concept of interpretive drift also tends to ignore the occasionally violent embodiment of nonrational knowledges integral to psychic and magical experience. It is this notion of the ineffability of magick--a visceral, psychic, energetic, bodily experience--that only a performance based analysis can hope to decipher.

62 Performance Studies, Ethnography, and Occultism

Performance studies, as an interdisciplinary field, emphasizes the body as a site of knowing and performance itself as an opportunity for face to face encounters between ethnographer and subject. In one of several essays on ethnography, performance studies scholar and ethnographer Dwight Conquergood claims a positionality for the researcher that sounds strikingly similar to Starhawk’s connections between immanence and social action. He critiques ways of knowing imposed from a privileged, empirical position, valorizing knowledge that is

“grounded in active, intimate, hands-on participation and personal connection . . . from ground level, in the thick of things” (312), privileging proximity over objectivity (“Performance Studies”

315). Conquergood describes this embodied knowledge sought through performance studies:

“[t]he performance paradigm privileges particular, participatory, dynamic, intimate, precarious and embodied experience grounded in historical process, contingency and ideology”

(“Rethinking Ethnography”187). This language of immanence, expressed by Starhawk as a religious and political view, fills Conquergood’s work, concisely articulating the immediate and tangible role of ethnography within performance studies, and is particularly well suited to ethnographic encounters in which the scholar is also a practitioner. Conquergood’s own dichotomy between privileged and grounded knowledge resonates strongly with debates surrounding occultism and initiation within magical communities. Traditional Enlightenment occultism certainly foregrounds the notion of secret knowledge as a treasure reserved for the elite. However, the current revision of occultism by various Pagan movements emphasizes the grounded, experiential knowledge that Conquergood valorizes. The troubling of boundaries between insider and outsider is also happening in magickal communities. In addition, as we will 63 see in later chapters, Conquergood’s call to ethnographic action strongly resonates with Pagan politics and notions of individual and communal roles within a religion of immanence.

Furthermore, the questions that Conquergood asks in his groundbreaking 1991 essay,

“Rethinking Ethnography: Towards a Critical Cultural Politics,” can be directly applied to the issues surrounding occultism and initiation that we will be addressing in this work (“Rethinking

Ethnography”190). First, Conquergood asks, “What are the conceptual consequences of thinking about culture . . . as [an] unfolding performative invention instead of a reified system, structure, or variable?” This question is most immediately relevant in examining how initiation rituals (and indeed magickal ritual as a performance genre) have changed and adapted to allow for more individualistic and improvisational approaches. Inherent to this question are the ways that the performance paradigm shifts the emphasis from “the world as text,” a notion strongly associated with the natural philosophy at the heart of Renaissance occultism, to “the world as performance.”

Again, this paradigm shift is clearly reflected in the contemporary developments of modern occultism, and changing approaches to text and performance. Second, “What are the methodological implications of thinking about fieldwork as the collaborative performance of an enabling fiction between observer and observed, knower and known?” Our survey on Pagan ethnography has certainly begun to address this question.

Conquergood’s third question, “What kinds of knowledge are privileged or displaced when performed experience becomes a way of knowing, a method of critical inquiry, a mode of understanding?” reflects a growing emphasis on bodily knowledge in analyses of magickal ritual.

As was suggested by Greenwood and others, researchers are beginning to take seriously the experiences of practitioners and their own experiences while in ritual space. Sarah Pike certainly emphasizes bodily knowing when she writes about celebrants at various Pagan festivals who 64 dance around the fires. These dancers use the body as a site for expression, healing, conflict resolution, exploration, and learning. Pike herself writes of her participation in the fire circle as a performance space where she awakens “sensual memories embedded in my body” ( Earthly

Bodies 189). Nikki Bado-Fralick laments that when religious studies and folkloristics address ritual performance, “it is removed from its context in the embodied world of ritual praxis. It is duly cleansed of any reference to the transformative power of magic, prayer or other discourse of faith.” (8). According to Bado-Fralick, these studies emphasize ritual as “disembodied text” rather than as a bodily, visceral experience that “feels real” to the participants. Further, she critiques performance theorists that “tend to secularize ritual and evaluate it as an act of artistry, a moment of religious theater” (19). Theatrical metaphors are inadequate for the study of magickal ritual, and especially problematic for practitioners, specifically because of an association with “play-acting,” the notion that the activities are somehow inauthentic, as in the case of an ethnographer like Luhrmann pretending to be an initiate.

In his essay in Researching Paganisms , entitled “Implications for the Performance of

Research,” Andy Letcher notes the discomfort his informants had with the term “performance,” an observation that reaffirms my experience with other practitioners, especially when I attempted to explain what I meant by performance studies. Nevertheless, Letcher, fully utilizing the discourse of performance studies, citing Erving Goffman, Victor Turner, Richard Schechner and

Judith Butler, among others, asserts that “[a]s a Pagan insider, performer, and scholar, I believe both that spirits exist and that performance is an insightful category for understanding what I, and others like me, do” (31). In my experience, I have similarly found that many practitioners often struggle with issues surrounding performance in their ritual work, even when they do not approach them in a scholarly setting, as Letcher and I do. 65 Nikki Bado-Fralick also suggests that performance is still a viable methodology,

especially for a practitioner/scholar like herself who can recognize and interpret participant

experience, since “analysis of performance implies a close face-to-face knowledge of the speaker

and the performative act” (19). Yet, Bado-Fralick is aware of the challenges of using

performance as a category for studying Wiccan ritual. According to her, “like all religions,

Wicca has its share of pretenders, those who reveal the double-edge natures of performance,

practice, and play , and their connections to the theater.” To address this, she distinguishes between “ play in the ludic sense, with its invocation of exuberant spontaneity and dynamic creativity, and playing or pretending , which I interpret as a kind of surface appearance without

center or real power.” She further recommends that scholars should “examine the criteria by

which a religious community determines the authenticity or inauthenticity of its religious

performances” (19). In my own experiences, I have judged the rituals I have participated in by

the same criteria. Some rituals, and in some cases, particular moments within rituals, would feel

genuine, coming from an authentic place and seeming to raise energy in spontaneous and organic

ways, while others would feel trite, rehearsed, empty, unfocused, boring, showy, too theatrical,

or pretentious. Of course, these assessments are highly individualized and not everyone would

agree about what felt “genuine” to them, though some moments have more consensus about their

success than others.

Jenny Blain, writing on the Northern shamanistic practice of seidr within Pagan groups,

comments on how shamanic practitioners view ritual as performance not on how something

looks or sounds, but on whether it works. In this case, “‘performance’ aspects of the process

relate to the creation of a relationship between human and nonhuman inhabitants, within a

specific cultural/cosmological framework; and, as the relationships are being created today, the 66 techniques and tools used have to make sense for today’s practitioners” (226). Furthermore, even though shamanistic performance is not performance in the theatrical sense for audiences,

“the ritual can be viewed as a performance that must be sufficiently convincing to members that they join in: the energy of the singing becomes a vehicle which the seeress uses to meet her spirits and gain knowledge from them” (226-227). This performance aspect certainly holds true for most contemporary magickal ritual. In other words, the degree of everyone’s participation in the rite is mostly predicated on the actions of the facilitators, whether what they are doing is considered effective, or more importantly, whether what they are doing allows for an open engagement with the ritual activities as prescribed by the facilitators. In my experience, the most successful rituals are often those that allow for a diverse range of engagements with the ritual content and have facilitators who are able to adapt their actions to the immediate needs and desires of the participants. Thus, performance as an “insightful category” for evaluating magickal ritual is both highly individual and ambiguous, and even the definition of “successful” ritual is debatable, especially among practitioners. These intersections of performance and ritual are also primary points of exploration for this work.

Finally, Dwight Conquergood’s fifth set of questions has great relevance for the study of occultism and initiation. He asks, “What is the relationship between performance and power?

How does performance reproduce, enable, sustain, challenge, subvert, critique, and naturalize ideology? How do performers simultaneously reproduce and resist hegemony? How does performance accommodate and contest domination?” (190). Researchers into Paganism and magickal practice have been asking these questions for quite some time, particularly with regards to initiation. Significantly, questions of power are central to Starhawk’s approach to Pagan political action, where she distinguishes between methods of domination she calls “power over” 67 and individual resistant action she calls “power from within” ( Dreaming 13). Power, particularly the formulation of “knowledge is power” is a fundamental factor in debates concerning magic from the Enlightenment onward. Specifically, those in power were thought to have a magical hold on their subjects, and that magic itself was simply an instrument of power.

This fear holds today, as Ronald Hutton discovered in his research experiences, among those whose “view of the cosmos and its workings was sufficiently insecure for them both to credit the real efficacy of magic and to feel genuine fear and awe of those who might be able to operate it”

(Witches 276). It is this fear that is at the heart of continued suspicions of witchcraft and enduring conspiracy theories around secret societies like the Freemasons.

However, in approaching initiation, both researchers and practitioners have wondered to what degree initiation rituals subvert or support status quo power dynamics. As Jone Salomonsen reports, Reclaiming Collective’s use of initiation is a controversial practice among its members, since the process, which demands that an initiate temporarily submit her will to that of her initiators, seems to contradict the group’s adherence to non-hierarchical frameworks and its attitudes around equal access to knowledge (49). Similarly, Susan Greenwood, building upon ritual theory from Catherine Bell and Jean LaFontaine, attempts to place the initiate in a discursive nexus of power that both uplifts the candidate, potentially transforming her status, and validates and strengthens the position of the initiators (146). This discursive nexus takes into account the initiate, the initiators, the group she is joining, and the collective histories of all the individuals and groups involved. Understanding what is meant by power is crucial in analyzing initiation as a performative act. Practitioners often talk of “energy” and power being transferred between initiators and initiates, or of raising energy in a rite, but establishing a consistent definition of these terms among practitioners is difficult. In these scenarios, facilitators often see 68 themselves as vessels for divine energy that they draw from nature, the gods and goddesses or

the “universe” and channel it for use in the rite. Again, Susan Greenwood discusses how

practitioners locate the source of their power and authority in the “otherworld” and how this may

lead to unethical behavior justified by invoking the knowledge gained from these otherworldly

sources (180). These issues of power and authority are no less important to practitioners than

they are to scholars. Throughout this work, I will address these issues when presenting occultism

as performance.

I omitted one of Conquergood’s questions about the implications of a performance

approach to ethnography. This is the fourth question: “What are the rhetorical problematics of

performance as a complementary or alternative form of ‘publishing’ research?” Although

Conquergood was mainly concerned with upsetting the scholarly paradigms around publishing

written research, making a case for performance of research as a viable medium for scholarly

discourse, I believe his question implies a range of issues about the “sacred” nature of scholarly

text and its fetishized power as a repository of scholarly authority. Historically, occultism has

certainly foregrounded the magickal qualities of textuality, based on early modern approaches to

nature as a “Book” to be read and deciphered. Furthermore, the notion of the authoritative sacred

book is a recurring trope in occult discourse. However, the ways in which occultists manipulate

and play with textuality indicate a more fluid and performative approach to text. One such

example is Gerald Gardner’s Book of Shadows , a compendium of personal ideas, ritual designs and spellwork that served as a model for subsequent Wiccan practice. In studying this work, one gets the sense of a process, developing and evolving over time, with its intentionally blank pages, inconsistent handwriting and cobbled together rituals, invocations, and magical theory from a wide range of biblical, classical and modern sources. Gardner recommended that practitioners 69 follow his lead by performing a sort of active reading, encouraging initiates to physically copy the book and add their own material, so that under duress they could claim that it was all their own invention, which was the very thing he was accused of himself (Hutton, Triumph 237).

Within the occult tradition, text itself is often not a fixed entity and both written text and performed ritual work continually inform each other. Tricky texts are often the basis for the initiatory transmission and they should be studied as initiatory tools, not just static artifacts.

Text can also become magickal in another sense, especially when ethnographers begin to apply initiatic paradigms to their own work. For instance, Sarah Pike makes a comparison between her process as an ethnographer with practitioners’ spiritual experiences: “Just as they were initiated on their spiritual paths, so was I on an intellectual journey towards my identity as a scholar . . . my ethnography, like their writing, attempted to put the ineffable into words, as we both struggled to find meaningful metaphors to describe bodily and emotional experiences”

(“Gleanings” 109). In this initiation drama, the performance studies ethnographer follows an immanent script similar to Stephen Tyler’s “postmodern ethnography,” an occult document that

“aims not to foster the growth of knowledge but to restructure experience; not to understand objective reality, nor to explain how we understand, but to reassimilate, to reintegrate the self in society and to restructure the conduct of everyday life” (135). What Tyler seems to be describing here is nothing less than the initiation of the ethnographer: not an empty ritual, but a full immersion of the individual into the experience of her ethnographic subject. This experience of immersion is ultimately the goal of a performance studies ethnography, and the language used to describe this experience is undeniably magical. Notably, the subtitle of Tyler’s essay, “From A

Document of The Occult to Occult Document,” further belies a kind of magical, transformational process of ethnographic writing. In writing an ethnography on Pagan culture, Sabina Magliocco 70 acknowledges Tyler’s call for magical transformation: “Thus the writing of ethnography

becomes a magical act, no less than the creation of a ritual, the making of a spell, or the

manufacture of the sacred object: the ethnographer is by definition a magician. The magic of

ethnography is precisely its capacity to evoke for readers the sensual, corporeal, emotional

aspects of experience” (17-18). This formulation of ethnography as a magical act informs my

own work.

My role as a practitioner and participant in magickal culture certainly shaped my own

ethnographic approach. Because I took an active role as an educator, ritualist and organizer in

my groups, particularly in the Hermetic Order, I did not consider my activities “fieldwork” as

such, but rather “work.” Everything I did, both communally and personally, served to broaden

my learning and experience as a practitioner, thus enriching my ability to write on my subject

from that perspective. I also feel that my work contrasts with others who have written on the

magickal groups they have joined in that I did not specifically choose the groups as research

material. Unlike Susan Greenwood, for instance, who found a “high magic Order” through a

magazine advertisement ( Magic 51), my associations with various groups developed gradually and organically, based on where my personal and spiritual path led me at the time.

Consequently, when I wanted to interview someone, I had absolutely no problem with recording the conversations because of my close relationships with these people. Most of the time, these interviews consisted of discussions on concepts and practices, in which we reflected as fellow practitioners. I experienced relatively little tension or fear that I was “infiltrating” their group. In fact, I had a very different relationship with my “informants” because my fellow magicians understood I was doing an academic project and supported me fully. They all had their own projects, often in various healing professions and simply understood my dissertation as part 71 of my spiritual development. 29 Unlike Luhrmann’s informants, my magickal compatriots certainly did understand the notion of academia as an initiatory path. My male colleagues even went so far as to create a strong talisman for me in which I was depicted as the magician in the classic Tarot drawing. The key to this drawing was the reproduction of my home altar and the caption of my name with my intended title: Dr. Jason Lawton Winslade, PhD.

Therefore this work is indeed grounded in and speaks from a subjective center. I, like

Ronald Hutton, have a double-edged interest in presenting academia and its crucial work to practitioners, and to conversely provide objective, non-prejudicial information to those both inside and outside the university system. I, too, am constantly writing from within paradox, but as a fully initiated member of both parties. With many fellow scholars and practitioners within

Pagan Studies, I share the contention that insider insights should be taken more seriously by the academy, and I attempt to balance my own insider and outsider status within this work. Like

Andy Letcher and Nikki Bado-Fralick, I write from my status as both scholar and practitioner, utilizing my “close face-to-face knowledge of the speaker and the performative act” in order to write about occultism and magic as performance. Thus, as an initiate of both the Western occult tradition and performance studies scholarship, I am in a unique position to recognize that my ethnographic and historiographical work is at once performance and initiation, scholarly and magickal.

Conclusion

29 Many of the Order members entered the group by first being students or clients of Althea and her husband John, who own and run The Chicago College of Healing Arts, a school that teaches alternative healing methods, including herbalism, massage, and acupuncture, among other things. They also run their personal practices from the same location, The Chicago Center For Psychophysical Healing. This was where the Hermetic Order would usually hold their rituals. 72 My earlier example of the hoodwink as part of the Golden Dawn initiation illustrates a key performance trope in the practice of occultism. Like occultism, performance itself may be understood as a constantly shifting dynamic of revelation and concealment, in which the performer determines what information and knowledge to reveal to his or her audience. In the case of occult initiation, the initiate becomes the audience for this performance. However, the initiate is not a passive audience. Rather, he or she is fully and actively participating in the drama, on a physical bodily level, as well as an energetic, spiritual level. Therefore, after introducing my terms and concepts, I have established initiation as an occult performance.

Furthermore, I have begun to explore initiation as a synecdoche for the practice of occultism, in which individuals seek gnosis, experiential spiritual knowledge, through ritualized practices.

I have also identified initiation as a paradigmatic metaphor for the seeking of knowledge through experience, not only within the spiritual realm, but also in the pursuit of an academic discipline like Performance Studies. To this end, I have shown the similarities in rhetoric and discourse between occult initiation and formulations of performance studies and ethnography by

Jon McKenzie, Dwight Conquergood, and Stephen Tyler, thus establishing occultism as a field of study that may be illuminated by the application of performance theory. Finally, I have followed this synthesis of occultism and performance through a brief survey of contemporary ethnographies on magical communities, highlighting where ethnographers, like Sabina

Magliocco or Nikki Bado-Fralick, have directly engaged with issues of performance, as well as ethnographic encounters where issues of performance play a prominent role, as in the cases of

T.M. Lurhmann and Jone Salomonsen. These examples demonstrate how initation is at once an apt metaphorical construct for the transformative encounter between researcher and object of study and an actual practice that may directly influence a researcher’s activities within an occult 73 group. Thus, this chapter has established the viability of an initiatory model for the researching and writing of occultism. The next chapter will attempt to delimit the vast categories of the

Western occultism itself, focusing on a particular genealogy of occult practice, some disciplinary boundaries in the study of occultism, and how performance further illuminates this discourse. 74 Chapter Two

Passage to Paradigm: Revealing the Discourse of Occultism

In establishing occultism as a field of study, one must inevitably locate occult discourse within a broader Western cultural and philosophical milieu. One example of such an approach is

Michel de Certeau’s formulation of heterologies, his term for marginalized discourses.

Examining de Certeau’s work, one might imagine that his theory could encompass our understanding of occultism, as it involves an emergent societal unconscious in which. rationality replaces faith, while creating a repressed form of mysticism. Might that mysticism be akin to occultism? The term occultism certainly implies a hidden discourse, underlying Western philosophy and history, a marginalized Other, haunting the interstices of modernity, just as the

“return of the repressed” constantly haunts the margins of history. If that is the case, the occult historian becomes a sort of parapsychologist, attempting to communicate with these repressed ghosts. Further, the return of the repressed is an alterity that threatens to explode the seemingly stable boundaries of mainstream discourse. Taking his cue from Foucault’s early work, Certeau posits forms of heterological discourse, a return of the repressed that covers topics like sorcery, miracles, madness, and “primitive culture” ( Heterologies 40). Like Foucault’s interest in the hidden discourses of the mental hospital and the prison, de Certeau’s interest in the saint, mystic, and sorcerer demonstrates this notion of the occult discourse (and its authors) as hidden, lying underneath, connected but yet still hidden and marginalized in Western culture.

But could occultism be more than just the marginalized Other of rationalism? And what is this repressed mysticism? Part of my task is to investigate the kinds of hiddenness that occult discourse performs and what sort of space these actions occupy. In the following chapters, I will demonstrate that particular occult actions create a discursive slippage and disruption of 75 traditional notions of occultism as merely irrational or marginal. These actions might involve

the adaptation and use of texts with questionable origins, a common practice with occult groups.

Or they could involve more overtly performative ritual gestures that demonstrate a

concealment/revelation dynamic, as in the Golden Dawn initiation ritual, in which candidates are

blindfolded but then permitted to see certain symbols or images. Here, action includes

performative acts that not only conceal in the sense of “occult” (hidden), but also in the sense of

revealing the hidden. Thus, the term “occultism” most readily refers to the

concealment/revelation process of passing secret knowledge from initiator to initiate. This

process is certainly not limited to the esoteric setting, but can equally be applied to non-

metaphysical situations such as job training, military training based on rank, or academic

learning based on grades and levels. The groups and individuals I write about in this work

expressly use the notion of concealing and revealing, often operating within a religious context,

but the concept is not merely confined to the religious realm. These practitioners, through both

their texts and performances, utilize occultism as a method of teaching, training, and initiating.

In this chapter, I will focus on the elements of occult discourse itself, including

constructions of occultism that have been recently debated within religious and cultural studies.

Secondly, I will outline some of the major events and movements in the genealogy of what is

popularly known as the Western Mystery Tradition. 1 I have focused on the movements that have

the most direct influence on contemporary magickal practice, either through the use of texts,

1 The Journal of the Western Mystery Tradition , an e-zine juried by a collection of scholars and practitioners, tells us that the term was first applied by Samuel Mathers, a founding member of the highly influential Victorian occult group, the Golden Dawn. Mathers apparently used the term to differentiate Western esotericism from Eastern traditions and Theosophy, a contemporary philosophy based on Western conceptions of Eastern mysticism (Summer 2001). The term was also popularized by Celtic scholar, John Mathews in The Western Way: A Practical Guide to the Western Mystery Tradition (1985). 76 rituals, or specific philosophies. These include Hermeticism, Rosicrucianism, Freemasonry, the Golden Dawn tradition, which includes much of Aleister Crowley’s writings, Gardnerian

Wicca, and finally feminist Witchcraft. Although many scholars (and practitioners, for that matter) make clear distinctions between Wicca/Witchcraft and the Western Mystery Tradition, I argue that these distinctions are not as dichotomous as they might seem. 2 In addition, scholarly study of these movements has suggested the place of occultism within debates surrounding modernity and postmodernity, such as Alex Owen’s recent work on magickal practitioners in the

Victorian era Golden Dawn. Finally, I will address these debates in my definition of occultism as performance.

On the whole, occultism has a rich history in the West. Yet, it is important to distinguish between the occult arts, like astrology, alchemy, or magick, and occultism in the sense of a syncretic discourse about these practices. Whereas magick in the Western occult tradition refers to ritualized action performed with a stated intent, occultism is a general study of esoteric philosophies and practices, of which magick is only a part. Occultism can also imply the systems and societies which incorporate these practices into their structures and workings. The primary metaphor and medium for transmitting these practices is initiation. As previously stated, initiation implies a tradition and a lineage in which masters pass knowledge onto apprentices, teachers onto students, initiators onto initiates. This structure is at the heart of the Western

Mystery Tradition. But it is also the basis for the creation of the scholarly field of Western

Esotericism.

2 Tanya Luhrmann, for instance, distinguishes between the Western Mystery Tradition and Witchcraft (Persuasions 56). 77 Philosophia Occulta: Occultism As Discourse

In the late 1980’s, European scholars, led by Antoine Faivre and Wouter Hanegraff, began to define areas of research separate from mainstream Religious Studies. Their interest was to provide legitimacy for the study of what they called “esotericism.” For Faivre especially, esotericism, a term in its noun form only since the beginning of the 19 th century, becomes a methodological tool for outlining a field of study based on a particular way of thinking ( Access

4). In this context, the scholarly approach to esotericism is an empirical one that respects

differences throughout Western milieus, using a term that is “suitable for denoting an ensemble

of cultural and religious realities, which a family resemblance seems to bind together sufficiently

to authorize our making them a field of study” (19). 3 Esotericism, in its most common sense,

implies a kind of “secret” knowledge in which the understanding of a symbol, myth, or reality

can only be achieved through “a personal effort of progressive elucidation through several

successive levels, i.e., by a form of hermeneutics” (5). In his continued work, Faivre makes great

pains both to locate esotericism historically and to firmly establish the disciplinary boundaries of

esotericism.

Historically, Faivre situates the subject matter of his field somewhere at the beginning of

the twelfth century C.E., when the natural sciences began to separate from theology. Towards the

end of the fifteenth century, when the Renaissance was early in its development, the slack was

picked up by humanist scholars, who were neither fully secular nor fully theological in their

approach; though fully Christian, they reacted heavily against the Aristotelianism of scholastic

theologians. Two major events influenced these scholars most directly. One of these was the

1492 Spanish expulsion of the Jews, who carried knowledge of the Hebrew mystical system of 78 Kabbalah and spread it to other areas of Western Europe. The other was a discovery in

Macedonia of Greek texts thought to be ancient. Unearthed by a monk in the employ of the

wealthy Cosimo de Medici, the work was translated a few years later, in 1463, into Latin by

Marsilio Ficino under the title Corpus Hermeticum. These texts were added to The Emerald

Tablet , a mysterious text translated into Arabic in the early medieval era and into Latin in the

twelfth century, followed by several other versions, including one translated by Isaac Newton. 4

The tablet, a simple one page document that proclaimed the secrets of alchemy in the phrase “as

above so below,” was possibly the single most important document to the study of natural

philosophy until the Hermetic texts were found. 5 The integration of all these texts led to the birth

of Hermeticism as a philosophical movement. 6 Hermeticists applied this philosophy to all

manner of pursuits, including alchemy (the attempt to turn lead into gold), astrology, divination,

conjuring of spirits, interpretation of sacred texts, and various other occult practices.

Yet, the inception of Hermeticism as a philosophical construct is itself indicative of a

pattern that would also become part of occultism, with regards to texts and origins. The dramatic

discovery of a text always seems to be at the heart of major events in this tradition. The

3 Critics of Faivre rightly point out the tautological aspects of his definition, arguing that it is limited to the actual examples he uses to represent esotericism (von Stuckrad 5).

4 See Antoine Faivre, “Ancient and Medieval Sources of Modern Esoteric Movements” in Modern Esoteric Spirituality (1992) 1-70.

5 The phrase “as above, so below” is often paraphrased from the Emerald Tablet and is commonly used by practitioners to indicate Hermetic wisdom. The actual phrasing on the Emerald Tablet varies depending on the translation. Madame Blavatsky, the founder of the Theosophical Society, translated the famous line in the Emerald Tablet this way: “What is below is like that which is above, and what is above is similar to that which is below to accomplish the wonders of the one thing” (507).

6 Faivre and his compatriots distinguish between Hermetism, the study of the Alexandrian texts known as the Hermetica, and Hermeticism, the study of Western esotericism in general, such as alchemy and magic (Edighoffer 198). I would add that Hermeticism, though it involves varied practices, still adheres to the basic principles laid out in the Hermetica and the Emerald Tablet.

79 unearthing of the Corpus Hermeticum , a series of texts that brought together wisdom and philosophy from both the Egyptian and Hellenic worlds, was the first spark of Hermeticism, particularly embodied by Marsilio Ficino and his students. It is also typical of the history of occultism and its movements that the Hermetica ’s origins were shrouded in mystery and scholars at first attributed a much more ancient date to its inception than was to be the case. In 1614, approximately 150 years after Ficino’s Latin translation of the Corpus Hermeticum , an Isaac

Casaubon provided considerable evidence that the supposedly ancient Hermetic texts could not be any older than the second or third century C.E. Not only did this call into question the identity of the author, the so-called Hermes Trismegistus (thought to be a teacher of Moses, among other ancient figures) 7; it cast doubt on the authenticity of the text itself. Massive debate ensued in Western Europe over whether these works could still be respected (Yates, Rosicrucian

84). 8 Yet, despite these setbacks, the considerable influence of this mythical amalgam as author continued. Thus, we have a philosophical movement brought into being by a questionable text that in turn influences practice. This formula reveals the tendency for occultists to imagine that what they are doing is imitating the ideas and actions of their mysterious forbears. In this case, we have fifteenth-century Italian humanists attempting to embody the philosophy and practice of people they imagine to be ancient Egyptians. Furthermore, the pattern remained the same even when that origin was shown to be somewhat fanciful and these “ancient Egyptians” remained the

7 Simon During suggests that the Old Testament story in Exodus in which Moses and Aaron turn their staffs into snakes is the source for Renaissance Neoplatonists’ claims of a connection between Moses and Hermes, who was often symbolized by the caduceus, a staff entangled with two snakes. Interestingly enough, he also cites this story as one of the first recorded instances of a magic trick, one that would continue to inspire street and stage magicians (4).

80 model for many occult groups afterwards, particularly Freemasonry and the Golden Dawn,

who used a distinctly British colonialist version of ancient Egypt in their symbols and rituals. 9

However, this adaptation of an imagined past served a purpose. Both the study of

Hermetic philosophy and Christianized Kabbalah, the exegesis of Hebrew texts in order to discover God’s secret messages, brought to the table a desire to use these systems in order to find the common thread uniting different religious traditions and schools of thought. The works referenced and produced by scholars in search of common universals ultimately were considered a body of esoteric knowledge separate from the “exoteric” religion of the denominational churches (Faivre, “Western Esotericism” 111-4). During the crucial period in which the

Hermetic texts were translated, Ficino, with the support of his benefactor, Medici, directed a

Platonic Academy in Florence, where he and his student Pico del Mirandola, among others, began to champion fields like Hermetic philosophy, alchemy, astrology, and magick (Faivre,

Access 58). These disciplines soon became known as occult sciences due to the fact that their truths could only be fathomed by keen observation of occult forces or virtues present, but hidden, in nature. In his classic work, De Vita or Three Books on Life (1489), Ficino developed an elaborate system of natural medicine, similar to the ancient Chinese traditions, in which bodily ailments are treated by correspondence with a particular planetary influence. For instance, substances corresponding to Jupiter would be used as restoratives or for preservation of youth.

These substances could be certain foods, plants, herbs, incenses, and even particular kinds of

8 Frances Yates also chronicles the debates between Robert Fludd and Marin Mersenne, among others, about the legitimacy of the Hermetic tradition and its teachings ( Rosicrucian 111).

9 The Egyptian/Masonic influence on Revolutionary America is unmistakable, down to the truncated pyramid and the Eye of Horus on the national seal and the one-dollar bill. Howard mentions this in The Occult Conspiracy (93). See also books by David Ovason, especially The Secret Symbols of the Dollar Bill (NY: Harper Collins, 2004), and The Secret Architecture of Our Nation’s Capital: The Masons and the Building of Washington D.C ., (NY: Harper Collins, 2000). 81 music. 10 Significantly, however, Ficino distinguishes between demonic magic and natural magic, associating natural magic, which he also calls the philosophy of nature, with the Magi who visit Christ after his birth. Thus, Ficino attempts to firmly establish a practice compatible with Christian tradition.

Cornelius Agrippa’s foundational work De Occulta Philosophia (1533) continued this notion of natural magic, developing a philosophia occulta that attempted to unify thinking on nature and religion. Agrippa’s distinction between natural and demonic magic was a bit looser than Ficino’s, as he recommended that “secondary divinities,” such as planetary spirits, could be contacted and utilized for magical purposes (Hutton 80). Agrippa’s magnum opus, consisting of three books, establishes magick as a rational practice, working with nature (animals, plants, metals, and stones) in the first book, astrology (the ‘Celestiall’) in the second book and ceremonial magick in the third. In another intriguing example of the typical occult confusion over authors and dates, a phenomenon we will explore more deeply in the next chapter, a supposed Fourth Book, focusing on the darker aspects of occultism, including demonic evocation, was published thirty years after Agrippa’s death. Agrippa’s student, Johann Weyer, immediately denounced this text as a fake. Although Stephen Skinner in his 1978 and 2004 editions of the Fourth Book questioned this, the notion that Agrippa was not the author is still the generally accepted wisdom on this work. 11

10 Intriguingly, Ficino used this system to prescribe treatment for academics, who were the most likely to suffer from melancholia, thus writing the first treatise on the health of the intellectual, and, indeed, the first on the health hazards of any profession (3).

11 See Christopher Lehrich, The Language of Demon and Angels: Cornelius Agrippa’s Occult Philosophy (Boston: Brill Publishing, 2003). 82 Nevertheless, Agrippa established a particular worldview in which a two-way conduit was seen between a Divine source and the manifest aspects of the physical world. The following quote, the opening lines from the first book of occult philosophy, entitled “Natural Magick,” typifies this view. Inherent to Agrippa’s précis are the threefold elements of occult discourse: a system of knowledge based on the notion of correspondence (analogy), a practice that utilizes that knowledge, often within a ritual context, and a method of transmission in which pedagogy and politics, both individual and social, play clear roles, and are inculcated through both teaching and ritual, especially initiation.

Seeing there is a three-fold World, Elementary, Celestiall, and Intellectual, and every

inferior is governed by its superior, and receiveth the influence of the vertues thereof, so

that the very original, and chief Worker of all doth by Angels, the Heavens, Stars,

Elements, Animals, Plants, Metals, and Stones convey from himself the vertues of his

Omnipotency upon us, for whose service he made, and created all these things: Wise men

conceive it no way irrationall that it should be possible for us to ascend by the same

degrees through each World, to the same very originall World it self, the Maker of all

things, and first Cause, from whence all things are, and proceed . . . 12

Agrippa considers it “in no way irrationall” that magicians can ascend that ladder just as surely as Divine force (the chief worker) can descend it. The rungs in between are rich and varied, from the knowledge of correspondences between metals and planets, to the highly esoteric knowledge regarding communication with angels and spirits. This is a world in which everything acts upon

12 From Chapter One of Agrippa’s first book, online at . See Works Cited list for full entry. 83 and reflects everything else by way of association, analogy and imagination. Similarly, the

process of alchemy, though supposedly directed towards changing lead to gold, was practiced as

an analogy for the transmutation and purification of the human soul (Faivre, Access 13). Though not explicitly outlined, Agrippa’s description of the ascension up the ladder implies a particular process of training and knowledge seeking. This image of ascension is a common one to occult practice, similar to the Tree of Life, a Kabbalistic glyph utilized by the Golden Dawn to symbolize the path the initiate takes to reach divine knowledge. Conversely, the Tree also illustrates the downward “lightning flash” through which the divine manifests. 13

Philosopher magicians like Ficino and Agrippa lay the foundation for occultism through a combination of philosophy and practice. Their work provides a pattern for Faivre’s study of

Western Esotericism. Accordingly, Faive establishes the broader foundation of esotericism by listing four fundamental elements in several of his essays: 1) the notion of correspondence, as between microcosm and macrocosm, embodied in the Hermetic axiom “As above, so below”; 2) the sense of living nature, in which nature can be both read as if it were a text and manipulated;

3) imagination and mediation, in which the use of symbols is essential to understanding divine and natural principles; 4) the experience of transmutation, important to alchemy, especially where the transmutation of lead to gold is analogous to the transmutation of the soul (Theosophy

10-14). In his formulation, the aforementioned notion of transmission is related to this last category. For Faivre, the esoteric is that knowledge characterized by these elements.

13 Most practitioners claim that the glyph is “ancient” or “before recorded history” but Kabbalists generally believe that it originated some time between the sixth and thirteenth centuries (C.E.), since it is referred to in the thirteenth century mystical text Sepher ha Zohar. However, practitioners have constantly modified the basic diagram since then. For instance, the 19 th century French occultist Eliphas Levi was responsible for the association of the Tarot deck, primarily a divinatory tool, with the Tree. This was further adapted and implemented by the Golden Dawn (Drury 46). 84 Recently, religion historian Kocku von Stuckrad has preferred to establish the study of esotericism based on Foucauldian discursive formations, rather than on a set definition of the object of study. Like Faivre, von Stuckrad attempts to situate esotericism in relationship with the discourses of Christianity, empirical science and Enlightenment, rather than in contrast to them, as has usually been the case in studies of the intersections between religion, science and the esoteric (5). Seeking to avoid Faivre’s tautologies, von Stuckrad proceeds from a broader context, establishing a pluralistic model for European religious studies, in which the scholar recognizes the “discursive interweavings between religious systems and political or economic systems” as well as other aspects of culture, like philosophy, literature and art (9). According to this model, esotericism is not a singular tradition, a “coherent doctrine” or a grand, periodizing narrative, but rather a convenient category for the esoteric, which he defines as an “element of discourse in the European history of religion” involving claims of hidden knowledge and the means to reveal this knowledge (10). Von Stuckrad further defines the esoteric through its

“dialectic of the hidden and revealed , thus with ‘secrecy,’ but not in the sense that esoteric truth is accessible only to initiates. What makes a discourse esoteric is rhetoric of a hidden truth, which can be unveiled in a specific way and established contrary to other interpretations of the universe and history – often that of the institutionalised majority” (10, emphasis in original).

Further, this unveiling is accessible through a particular kind of mediation, “the link between hidden and revealed knowledge, between transcendence and immanence” available through ancient masters like the mythical Hermes, a chain of initiates, or in rare cases, direct inspiration

(10). Finally, as Stuckrad points out, revelation of hidden knowledge through the mediation of various kinds of initiation is a recurring motif throughout the history of esotericism, and applies not only to religious contexts, but also in various other cultural realms. 85 Following in this vein, Arthur Versluis similarly emphasizes the importance of gnosis to esotericism. As stated earlier, his definition of gnosis as “experiential insight into the nature of the divine as manifested in the individual and in the cosmos” ( Restoring Paradise 1). He further divides gnosis into two categories: the cosmological, where the individual engages in specific occult practices like alchemy, astrology, or magic and the metaphysical or transcendent, which he associates with direct contact with the divine, as in mysticism. Versluis maintains that initiation, either actual or metaphorical, stands as the main conduit for transmitting gnosis. His main thesis revolves around the notion that Western esotericism, unlike its Eastern counterparts

(Zen Buddhism or Sufism, for example), primarily transmits gnosis through a kind of

“ahistorical continuity,” rather than an unbroken line of initiatory tradition. Versluis describes this process as

the continuation of a specific esoteric paradigm precisely without any direct historical

lineage. Such a paradigm can be reawakened; it exists as a nascent possibility within the

tradition and even if it is eliminated by force or attrition in one historical period, it can

reemerge in another. Thus, although there may be an initiatory lineage in a given Western

esoteric tradition, it is also possible for an individual or group to rediscover or reawaken a

particular archetypal paradigm latent within a tradition without any direct contact with

such a lineage. (142-43)

According to Versluis’s formulation, the method for transmitting gnosis in the absence of an initiatory tradition is esoteric literature and art, as in the seventeenth century alchemical drawings of Michael Maier or the theosophical works of Jacob Böhme. For our purposes, it is important to note that in the history of Western esotericism a particular genealogy emerges, from a combination of initiatory traditions and ahistorical continuity, in which practitioners may 86 incorporate the philosophies and practices of an earlier tradition whether or not there is an

actual initiatory link to the past.

It is this combination of traditions for the purposes of practice that makes up what we

would call occultism. However, the actual term “occultism” was not used until the mid-

nineteenth century, when French radical Alphonse Louis Constant changed his identity to the

mystic magician Eliphas Lévi and coined it. Taking Agrippa’s notion of philosophia occulta ,

Lévi’s term delineated experiments and practices based on the occult sciences and esoteric thought. According to Faivre, Lévi’s occultism integrated the early modern occult sciences with an unlikely mix of both Enlightenment rationalism and an early form of spiritualism. Faivre further describes Lévi’s distinct notion of occultism as “a pronounced taste for ‘phenomena’ and

‘scientific’ demonstration as well as by an attraction to the picturesque and the fantastical readily cultivated for their own sakes, in this era when the world seemed definitively disenchanted”

(Theosophy xvii). Lévi’s occultism particularly dealt with the revelation of occult wisdom through practice (Hutton, Triumph 71). Lévi himself claimed to have performed necromancy,

the magical act of obtaining favors or information from deceased spirits. In addition to ritual

magick, he was also known to practice forms of scrying, astrology, and mesmerism. 14 Ever since

Lévi, with the popularity of spiritualism in the late 19 th and early 20 th century, the term “occult”

has popularly taken on a generic meaning connoting any sort of unexplained phenomena and a

myriad of cross-cultural supernatural beliefs or folk superstitions.

Faivre continues to distinguish esotericism and occultism, acknowledging that

esotericism is a form of thought, while “occultism would instead be a group of practices or a

14 Hutton describes Lévi’s particular innovations with the use of the pentagram and the hexagram as both banishing and invoking tools, particularly in dealing with elementals, spirits who could control the four elements and potentially serve the magician (70-72). 87 form of action that would derive its legitimacy from esotericism” ( Access 35). Wouter

Hanegraaf further demarcates the term “occultism” as the product of a post-Enlightenment

“collision between two different and inherently incompatible worldviews: the organicist

worldview of esotericism based on ‘correspondences’ and the post-Enlightenment worldviews

based on instrumental ‘causality’” (“The New Age Movement” 375). Thus, post-Enlightenment

occultists like Lévi, and later Aleister Crowley, who was highly influenced by Lévi, tempered

their esoteric knowledge with traces of rationality and positivism. In their hands, occultism, as a

subset of esotericism, becomes a kind of praxis, carried out through several means.

Subsequently, scholars often refer to an “occult philosophy,” building on Frances Yates seminal

1979 work, The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age . This refers to a loose connection

between the early modern “natural philosophy” of Ficino, Pico and others, and practices like

magic, alchemy and astrology. Even though this category can be too broad and unwieldy for

many scholars, B.J. Gibbons maintains that those who subscribed to the occult philosophy

certainly took it seriously enough as a category and that “its untidiness and vagueness are not a

license for supposing it out of existence” (4).

However, Alfred Vitale makes a significant distinction between esotericism and

occultism, clearly demarcating the category of “Modern Western Occultism” or “MWO.” He

establishes the emergence of this movement between the late 18 th and early 19 th centuries in

Europe and following precedents established in the 15 th century with Hermeticism, in which

Modern Western Occultism develops alongside modernist approaches to individualism and religion. Vitale contends that these developments are highly regulated by changing attitudes towards texts, technology, information, and knowledge. According to Vitale, Modern Western

Occultism, rather than being merely the result of secularization and general dissatisfaction with 88 mainstream religion, was influenced by contemporary developments in science and scientific

experimentation (41). In fact, he argues, this emphasis on experimentation and repeatability of

magical work was part of a broader project of separating magic and magical techniques from any

one theological stance (42). Further, Vitale colorfully presents the troubled relationship between

esotericism and occultism in current scholarship: “Within Esoteric Studies, occultism is like a

bastard child wandering around the family reunion; everyone nominally acknowledges him as

part of the family but nobody wants to talk to him” (45). Vitale wishes to reformulate the

relationship between occultism and esotericism as “one of kinship, but not hierarchy” (45).

To this end Vitale argues that esotericism, particularly Faivre’s criteria for the esoteric,

does not adequately account for occultism. He sees the distinction as one of systems. First,

“esoteric traditions are self-contained systems for maintaining their particular traditional path,

evolving more strategies to preserve their integrity” (44). Secondly,

From the perspective of Modern Western Occultism, any and all esoteric traditions will

contribute to the pool of information in which magical ritual work and philosophy is

based. This perspective strips the particular esoteric traditions into sets of information ,

each containing modes of representation at the core of occult practice. And while it is true

that MWO maintains the esoteric practice of correspondence, it does so across entire

esoteric systems rather than as a localized lexicon for associations within an esoteric

tradition. (47, emphasis in original)

In this formulation, occultism performs as a method of identifying traditions as technological systems that can be deconstructed into their functional parts and then reintegrated “into a unique, individualized system” (49). This method reaches an apex with the late 19 th century magical

group, The Golden Dawn, and particularly with the work of Aleister Crowley, who branched off 89 from that organization. The Golden Dawn mixed techniques and practices from Kabbalah,

Hermeticism, Egyptian mythology, Hatha Yoga, and Buddhist meditation, among other sources.

Crowley similarly recommended reading some primary texts from Eastern religions like The Tao

Teh King , The Upanishads , and the Bhagavad-Gita , among others, but went further by adding works by such diverse authors as William James, Kant, Hume, and Pythagoras ( Magick 37).

This definition of occultism as the systematization of elements from deconstructed esoteric traditions has intriguing implications. It encourages magicians to create their own, highly individualized systems based on their own personal interests and skills. Later in his essay,

Vitale interviews practitioners who display a wide variety of eclectic integration, involving everything from witchcraft and ceremonial magick to Tibetan Buddhism, Haitian Vodou, Sufism and various shamanisms. This eclecticism is certainly common in magickal communities. One of my main mentors in Chicago combined traditional Wicca, Druidry, Golden Dawn-style ceremonial magick, Kabbalah and even a bit of Haitian Vodou into his personal practice.15 While

all these systems taken individually would seem incompatible, my mentor was able to integrate

them into a cohesive, functional system for his own use. Occultism thus conceived is a practice

that is neither monolithic nor static, but eclectically diverse and constantly growing and

changing, adapting to personal experiences and influences from various media. Contemporary

practitioners are avid consumers who quickly attempt to integrate new information from

manuals, scholarly texts, fantasy fiction, the Internet, television and films. 16

15 Even this is a partial list, at best.

16 This incorporation of new media certainly has fascinating implications for the future of occult practice. I have begun to explore this aspect of occultism in some of my published work, particularly “Techno-Kabbalah” and “Wanna Blessed Bes.”

90 This extreme cross-fertilization also leads to issues of colonialism and cultural

appropriation, a problem that Sarah Pike considers when she researches Pagans who “borrow”

other cultural traditions, such as Native American shamanism and Voodoo ( Earthly Bodies 129).

Pike’s informants tend to offer religious reasons for their borrowings, such as feeling a “calling” towards a certain practice. The practices of the Golden Dawn, an organization in existence during a strong imperial phase for England, were undeniably constructed with a colonialist eye towards the “exotic” in Eastern religions and mythologies. Yet, I would argue that occult systematization is more than just colonial theft. For instance, the man who would become

Mahatma Gandhi apparently was awakened to his own cultural heritage through a copy of the

Bhagavad-Gita published by Blavatsky’s Theosophical Society, an organization contemporary to the Golden Dawn that shared both methods and members, if different goals and content. 17

Therefore, occultism is a matrix of cultural and philosophical ideas and practices, to be deciphered by the practitioner in any number of different ways.

Building upon the distinctions provided by Faivre, Vitale and others, I define the discourse of occultism in three ways. First, occultism draws from the broader current of esotericism in a manner similar to McKenzie’s “paradigm of knowledge.” While occultism functions as an individualized process of deconstruction and reintegration, as Vitale argues, there is enough coherence in its genealogy for it to be generalizable as a system. This system consists of a language of sorts, combining symbols, signs, connections, and correspondences, similar to the “living nature” studied by “natural philosophers” like Ficino and Agrippa. Secondly, occultism is a process and a practice in which practitioners utilize their constructed knowledge

17 Accordingly, Von Stuckrad argues that theosophy’s “construction of an ‘Oriental Spirituality’ as the ‘ancient wisdom’ of mankind significantly contributed to the strengthening of an anti-colonial identity in India” (127). 91 system in order to perform ritualized operations like magic or alchemy, both to achieve specific practical goals and to further their spiritual development. Finally, occultism is a pedagogy and a politics, a training process conducted through initiation and transmission, as well as a philosophy in which secrecy and hiddenness are integral to the functioning of the individual within a social and communal context. Occult philosophy and a magical worldview, utilizing an esoteric knowledge system that connects everything to everything else, may also determine the personal and political choices a practitioner makes within a community. The discourse of occultism is a discourse in which all three of these categories, practically inseparable, work in a close interrelation with each other. Here we have the triangle of occult discourse, a three-sided space we can liken to a triangle of evocation, a geometric shape drawn on the floor by early modern magicians who wished to bind recalcitrant spirits. Throughout this text, I perform this evocation, bringing to manifestation the spirits of this triangle: these three aspects of occult discourse that always overlap, intersect, and enmesh within the smoky space traced by the magician.

At this point, it is necessary to more specifically trace the genealogy that I will be drawing from in constructing my particular occult history. The occult philosophy of the

Renaissance underwent several significant changes in its evolutionary journey towards becoming

Modern Western Occultism and the contemporary practice associated with the Western Mystery

Tradition. The first of these is a transition from the individual magician or occultist, either supported by royalty or nobility, such as John Dee’s patronage by Queen Elizabeth, or simply working on their own, to the idea of a society of magicians working together as a group. The formation of magickal groups had several implications. First, in order for a group to have a

92 collective identity, that group had to develop a consistent system of practice. Secondly, a group’s collective identity had to be defined, supported and furthered through the use of initiation. Thus, many of these groups created graded initiatory degrees for their candidates.

Rosicrucianism arguably helped to create the idea of the secret, magickal society, while

Freemasonry actualized this idea, providing an initiatory structure for bourgeois society. The

Golden Dawn tradition built on that structure, effectively creating a means for integrating esoteric systems through an almost scientific method of experimentation consistent with the rise of Modernism. Gardnerian Wicca combined Golden Dawn-style systematization with Masonic structure, and added a strong sense of Romanticism, popular fascination with folklore and fantasies of the “pagan” rural countryside. Finally, feminist witchcraft, in many ways a reaction to these occult traditions, wished to move away from the patriarchal fantasies of Gardnerian

Wicca and valorize the roles of women in a religious tradition that revered the goddess aspect of divinity. As part of the growing feminist and environmental movements, their concerns tended increasingly towards the political. Yet feminist witchcraft still shares many commonalities with the other occult traditions, including an enchanted view of the universe, the use of magic, a manipulation of historical and anthropological narrative, and struggles over the initiatory process. These five movements, along with the philosophy of Hermeticism, are essential in understanding the process of occultism as a performative practice. By taking a closer look at these groups, we will begin to uncover some significant themes in this work.

Rosicrucianism

The occult construct known as the secret society seems to have begun as an urban legend.

The story of Rosicrucianism centers on a supposedly centuries-old secret society that announced 93 itself to the world through a series of pamphlets in Western Europe in the early years of the

17 th century. These pamphlets not only announced a utopian plan for a non-sectarian society

ruled by intellect, wisdom, and the principles of Hermeticism; they also called for interested

individuals to apply for membership. These so-called Rosicrucians claimed to be extremely

learned and enlightened individuals who held the esoteric secrets of the universe. Most

importantly, the Rosicrucians were opening their ranks to curious individuals who simply had to

make their interest known to the brotherhood somehow. As a result, countless intellectuals across

Western Europe went searching for the mysterious group, but to no avail. As a 17 th century urban

legend, Rosicrucianism took on its own life, achieving a controversial reputation within

Enlightenment Europe.

In the story of the Rosicrucian manifestos, circulation precedes publication. The first

official publication is actually a letter of response to the manuscript form of what would be the

Fama Fraternitatis, or a Discovery of the Fraternity of the Most Noble Order of the Rosy Cross ;

the Fama for short. The author of the letter was an alchemist by the name of Adam Haselmayer, who had come across a manuscript while serving his duty as notary public to the Archduke

Maximilian of Tyrol in 1610. The Fama manuscript was quickly making the rounds and Prince

August of Anhalt published Haselmayer’s letter two years later after reading a copy of the manuscript. 18 Christopher McIntosh mentions that Haselmayer’s practice of alchemy and

Paracelsian medicine made him unpopular with both the traditional medical establishment and the local Jesuits whose influence resulted in an imprisonment that lasted several years (24). Thus, when the Fama is finally published as a 147-page volume, it is accompanied by both a

18 McIntosh notes that “Textual differences between the handwritten versions suggests that it was avidly copied and recopied” (24). 94 translation of an Italian satirical work entitled “Reform of the Universe” and Haselmayer’s

letter. 19 With the Rosicrucians, then, context is everything. The full title of the volume leaves no

doubt that the “authors” thought so:

Universal and General Reformation of the whole wide world; together with the Fama

Fraternitatis of the Laudable Fraternity of the Rosy Cross, written to all the Learned and

Rulers of Europe; also a short reply sent by Herr Haselmayer, for which he was seized by

the Jesuits and put in irons on a Galley. Now put forth in print and communicated to all

true hearts. Printed at Cassel by Wilhelm Wessel, 1614. 20

Frances Yates suggests here that reading the Fama in context shows us it was intended

specifically at the time as anti-Jesuit propaganda, among other things (42). By the second

paragraph of the Fama , however, the writers promote Hermetic studies by asserting that the learned men of the day could illuminate the world with the Book of Nature, the “perfect method of all arts,” the very same concept that inspired John Dee and his predecessors. But the writers boldly claim what prevents this is adherence to the principles set forth by Aristotle, Galen, and the Pope. So at the beginning we have academics arguing over canon, over authoritative voices.

To show the potential for the type of learning they espouse, the writers then tell the story of their founding father, Christian Rosenkreutz (C.R.), who traveled to Damascus and Jerusalem

19 Additionally, the inclusion in the Fama of the extract from Trajano Boccalini’s allegorical satire Ragguagli di Parnasso (News from Parnassus) is notable. The translation presents us with a bevy of historical and contemporary characters presenting complaints to the god Apollo on Parnassus about the state of the world. Ultimately, all of the suggestions for reforming the world are rejected as implausible, and one character states that perhaps human love and charity are needed more than suggestions for reforming the world (McIntosh, Ros. 28). Yet the irony of this work seems to have been utterly lost on the manifesto’s audience, who generally thought that the Rosicrucians were intent on reforming the world.

20 All references to the Manifestos are to the English translations printed as appendices in Frances Yates’ The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (235-260). 95 receiving secret teachings in medicine, science, and natural philosophy, from the fabled East.

Ironically, these teachings merely strengthened his Christian faith, and when he attempted to

share his knowledge, first in Spain, then elsewhere in Europe, he was met with ridicule. Thus, he

was forced to secretly record his knowledge and share it with only three of his most trusted

brethren from the cloister where he was educated as a child. In keeping with the textual themes

still prevalent to the Hermeticists of the time, this small, original fraternity recorded a magical

language in a large dictionary. They then drew up several rules about how they would share their

knowledge with the world: by administering to the sick without charge, not making themselves

known through any particular habit (thus adopting the dress and custom of their environment),

meeting once a year at a sacred house built by C.R., choosing a successor before their death,

using the word C.R. as their “seal, mark, and character” and keeping themselves secret for one

hundred years (243).

Apparently the time for total secrecy had passed, and the document had been written. No

one knows whether or not the brethren ever responded to anyone. If they did, it was never

recorded (24). But the Rosicrucians were not done yet. They followed up a year later with The

Confession of the Laudable Fraternity of the Most Honorable Order of the Rosy Cross, Written to All the Learned of Europe , also known as the Confessio . This document continued the message with some crucial differences: first, the manifesto is written in Latin, rather than

German, in order to appeal to a more learned audience; second, the language is much harsher, anti-papal, and apocalyptic. The Confessio reiterates the Christianity of the brethren and their mission, their belief in God and the supremacy of the Bible, and most importantly, that they do not wish to overthrow any secular government, but to loosen the Pope’s control over the Holy

Roman Empire. Further, they justify setting forth the Fama in common languages so that the 96 unlearned could access it, but that the cries of the unworthy would never reach their ears. For instance, they rail against false alchemists and charlatans who are just in it for the money (258).

After a prolonged silence, in which no one heard back from the Rosicrucians, and then almost a century of debate, the fictional Rosicrucians eventually spawned quite a few “real” groups inspired by their philosophy. Not the least of these was the Gold-und Rosenkreutz (Gold and Rosy Cross), an instrumental group in 18 th century Central European politics who influenced

Freemasonry. Later groups included the English Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia (SRIA), of which the founders of the Golden Dawn were members, and the American group Ancient and

Mystical Order Rosae Crucis (AMORC), both prominent in late 19 th century occultism. 21

Rosicrucianism, therefore, stands as a foundation for the occult secret society, its mythic story of

Christian Rosencreutz providing occultists with a model for an occult narrative that struggles to establish secret origins. Its manifestos establish a sociopolitical program to inspire intellectuals and magicians in their attempts to create a better world, while simultaneously functioning as hoax texts that attempt a grand sleight of hand, concealing and revealing a mystery. This process of textual trickery is essential to occultism, continually appearing in various contexts with different movements.

Freemasonry

As occultism developed into the 18th and 19th century, the pattern of secrecy and sleight of hand that the Rosicrucian incident established certainly became more prevalent as new

21 The Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia (S.R.I.A.), founded in 1865, had membership consisting exclusively of high degree Masons, thus ensuring its members were both Christian and male. This elite group’s claim to lineage was through Kenneth Mackenzie who linked himself to the Gold-und Rosenkreutz. 97 esoteric groups emerged. The theme of the secret society dedicated to universal reform

continued its appeal. As McIntosh has pointed out, “The Rosicrucian vision was therefore both

traditional and radical, both theological and scientific. It drew its inspiration from an ancient

source of wisdom and at the same time represented a break with the prevailing spirit in the world

of learning” ( Rose Cross 26). This vision was extremely vibrant as Western Europe moved uneasily towards the Enlightenment. Nostalgia for past wisdom coupled with a progressive look towards the future created a third current in the conflict between the Enlightenment and the

Counter-Enlightenment. The aforementioned Gold–und Rosenkreuz (Gold and Rosy Cross) society carried this current with a heavy emphasis on alchemy as did the newly emerging practice of Freemasonry. By the beginning decades of the 18th century, Freemasonry, or speculative masonry, consisted of masonic trade guilds influenced by Hermetic and Rosicrucian philosophy. This continued until these guilds no longer consisted of actual masons, but those who used the building trade as an esoteric metaphor for their non-sectarian pursuit of religion, moral philosophy, societal training, charity and education. These craft guilds were not originally occult in their content, but certainly were in their form, with their elaborate initiation rites, symbolism and secret codes. At some unclear point in the mid-17th century, those interested in

Hermetic pursuits, stirred up by Rosicrucian ideals, somehow joined with these medieval holdovers and changed the face of their practice. 22

22 The earliest record we have of this commingling is in the diary of historian and alchemist, Elias Ashmole, himself a strong contributor to the Rosicrucian discourse. Ashmole, with no connection to actual masonry, records that he was admitted into a Lancashire lodge in 1646. Similarly, Sir Robert Moray, another Rosicrucian enthusiast, seems to have been admitted to an Edinburgh lodge five years earlier. This must have started a trend, because in 1717, we have an official record that the Grand Lodge of London, consisting of speculative masons, was founded, and remains today the central seat of British Freemasonry (McIntosh, Ros. 64). Eventually, we have Freemasonry taking hold on the continent, particularly in France and in Germany, where Karl Gotthelf founds the Strict Observance in 1764. Austria and Hungary also saw a proliferation of Rosicrucian and Masonic groups, and the new Rosicrucianism was to continue to have a strong effect on the political sphere of Central Europe. For instance, an Imperial decree banned Rosicrucianism in the Austrian empire in 1766, while in 1781, Prince Frederick-William 98 These masonic groups flourished in England and Scotland, and eventually the trend

spread to the continent. As German masonic groups developed, McIntosh tells us, radical

currents seemed to find more of a home in Freemasonry, while those with a more conservative

bent, looking for a religious alternative to rationalism, Lutheranism, and Catholicism, headed for

the new Rosicrucians, represented by groups like the Gold-und Rosenkreutz. It is this

combination of religious substitute, conservative focus, and the promise of secret knowledge to a

privileged elite, McIntosh alleges, that made the Gold-und Rosenkreutz successful. Therefore,

these groups and their prominent members played influential roles in the politics of the time,

despite the rule that religion and politics were not to be discussed at Masonic meetings (Bullock

33). Secret societies, like the Freemasons, then began “functioning as a major institutional means

for the preservation of the occult tradition” (Gibbons 17). Secrecy and ceremonial formality had

been major elements of medieval guild practice (i.e., pledges, secret handshakes), and Ronald

Hutton notes that the tendency for occult-like ceremony seemed to increase as the guilds’

economic and political power decreased during the late medieval and early modern centuries

(55). 23 Freemasonry ultimately became the primary means for indoctrinating young men into

proper society in both Western Europe and the young United States of America.

Although Freemasonry boasts an initiatory system that has lasted for several hundred

years, it also takes part in the dynamic of ahistorical continuity with its claims of antiquity and its

participation in origin myths. Freemasonry also serves as a symbol of occultism’s penetration

of Prussia, Austria’s long-time enemy, was initiated into the Gold –und Rosenkreutz in its last influential period (McIntosh, Rose Cross 77). Similarly, Freemasonry continued its anti-Catholic radical tendencies for a time before settling into a relative status quo.

23 Hutton also notes that “in medieval British records, the terms ‘art,’ ‘craft,’ and ‘mystery’ are used interchangeably for any trade or calling which required particular skills” (54). Thus, once again, the seemingly mundane activity of skilled labour is given an esoteric aspect. 99 into popular culture and consciousness, its name synonymous with conspiracy theory and the

fear of hidden power in the Western world. Very few world events in the last several centuries

have not been attributed to the Freemasons by some conspiracy theorist or other, most notably

the American and French Revolutions, especially since some of the major players in those events

were known to be members of Masonic lodges. Anti-masonic sentiment at various time periods

since the 18th century have led to persecution and oppression of its members, both in totalitarian regimes, like Hitler’s Germany, and governments heavily influenced by the Catholic Church, like Spain. 24 In America, an actual anti-Masonic party fielded a presidential candidate to challenge Andrew Jackson, a Freemason, in his bid for re-election in 1832. More recently, televangelist and would-be politician Pat Robertson famously accused Freemasonry of being a globalizing Satanic conspiracy in his 1991 book New World Order .

In reality, Freemasonry developed as a society for gentlemen who wished to replace the

violent sectarianism of the Reformation with an organization dedicated to friendship and

religious tolerance. Members professed a simple belief in God, while vowing to avoid religion

and politics in their discussions and most importantly, to keep the workings of the lodge secret.

Perhaps unfortunately, the vow of secrecy in Masonic initiation rites was accompanied by threats

of extreme violence against the oathbreaker, consisting of acts, like disembowelment, similar to

what were previously visited upon convicted traitors to the monarchy (Ridley 20). While these

threats were likely more powerful in their symbolic nature than in any chance of their being

actually carried out, Freemasonry’s later detractors would use these oaths as evidence of its

nefarious purposes. The very fact that secrecy was involved signaled to both the authorities and

24 As early as 1738, Pope Clement XII issued a Papal Bull condemning Freemasonry. This action was repeated by several subsequent Popes and played a large role in various Inquisitions (Ridley 50). 100 the common people that the Freemasons were enemies of the Church and State. The

assumption was that if meetings were secret, they were obviously planning for revolt. Indeed, the

very notion that individuals should be allowed latitude in their political and religious beliefs

constituted a threat to the European world order. 25 Eventually, according to historian Jasper

Ridley, the false rumor that Freemasons were revolutionaries actually drew young men interested

in revolution to their ranks, once again demonstrating an occult paradox in which real

organizations and events stem from rumor, legend and made-up stories (137). 26 In places like

Ireland, the American colonies and pre-revolutionary France, Masonic ideals like fraternity,

liberty and equality certainly appealed to these men and inspired their cause. However, as Ridley

demonstrates throughout his history of the order, Freemasons have been on both sides of every

major national and world conflict since their inception, with members spanning the political

spectrum on the left, center and right, thus dispelling any notion that a unified Masonic political

agenda exists.

However, the influence of Freemasonry on the rising middle class in colonial and post-

Revolutionary America was unmistakable. Steven C. Bullock, in Revolutionary Brotherhood:

Freemasonry and the Transformation of the American Social Order, 1730-1840 (1996), contends

25 This was compounded by Adam Weishaupt and his short-lived Illuminati, who wrote up plans to overthrow the Church and the governments of the world. Unfortunately, when Weishaupt was on the run from the authorities, these plans were left behind for general publication, confirming in everyone’s mind the danger of the group, despite the fact that the group was small in number and had no possible means of carrying their plans out. Weishaupt had attempted to infiltrate the Masons, but when they discovered what his intentions were, the Masons quickly distanced themselves from the Illuminati. Despite this, the Illuminati and Freemasonry are still continually linked in the public imagination when conspiracy theories are spread (Ridley 115).

26 The speculation that most of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were Masons is often cited by enthusiasts (Howard 82). However, Ridley corrects this misconception, citing that only nine of the fifty-five signers, (including, prominently, Washington, Franklin and Hancock) were Masons. He also dispels the notion that the infamous Boston Tea Party was a Masonic event, claiming that the radical Sons of Liberty used the same meeting room as the local Freemasons, who did not meet on the night in question (96-7). Again, ironically, Ridley states that many became Freemasons during the war, because they had heard it had been started by the Freemasons. 101 that “the fraternity served as a focal point for this transformation from a hierarchical society of superiors and inferiors to a republican society of independent citizens” (4). Furthermore,

Freemasonry helped its members navigate the changing boundaries of public and private citizenship. In his work, Bullock chronicles the shift in Freemasonry from emphasis on occult mysticism in the earlier part of the 18th century to a later repudiation of mysticism in favor of a focus on the Enlightenment ideals of ethics, pedagogy, and science. Yet despite this disassociation with occultism and magic, the order still found its ritual trappings, symbols and structure useful in inspiring awe and offering a deeper meaning for its members. Though

Masonry would fall in and out of favor throughout post-Revolutionary America and into the 19th century, the influence of the order as a fraternal organization and civic club was considerable.

Historians have noted the surprising figure that up to a fifth of the total population of male adults in the United States of 1890 belonged to groups based on the Masonic model (Hutton 64).

Although many of these were charitable institutions, like the Odd Fellows, some groups, like the

Ku Klux Klan, used the Masonic model for more questionable purposes (Bullock 317). Yet, the widespread influence of the occult structures of Freemasonry cannot be denied. Throughout its complex evolutionary history, Freemasonry tended to be more secular than esoteric. However, much of its ritual work, especially its initiation rites, strongly influenced occult movements in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, such as the Golden Dawn and Gardnerian Wicca.

The Golden Dawn Tradition

In Victorian England, occult societies had become fashionable for the middle class and many of these organizations shared membership with each other. For instance, the founders of the Golden Dawn were first esoteric Freemasons who were members of English Rosicrucian 102 societies and had flirted with Madame Blavatsky’s Theosophical Society, but were less

interested in that group’s emphasis on Hindu religion. The Golden Dawn tradition, however,

solidified the detailed systematization at the heart of Modern Western Occultism, as conceived

by Vitale. The Golden Dawn’s rituals and initiatory degrees, many of them constructed by one of

its founders, Samuel Liddell “MacGregor” Mathers, integrated esoteric systems and practices as

widely ranging as the Hindu Tattvas, Egyptian mythology, and Kabbalistic symbolism.

The Golden Dawn’s origin story seems almost as mysterious and mythic as the

Rosicrucians’ and similarly begins with the discovery of a text. An English coroner by the name

of William Wynn Westcott, a Freemason and member of the aforementioned British Rosicrucian

Society (S.R.I.A.) finds a set of documents hidden within the pages of a text in a London

bookshop. These documents were written in a cipher taken from Trithemius’ 1561 treatise,

Polygraphiae . Westcott translates the documents and comes upon a system of rituals and initiatory degrees combining rites from Rosicrucianism, Hebrew Kabbalah, the work of John

Dee, and recent Egyptology and classical studies. The most interesting part of this “discovery,”

however, is a letter from a Soror Sapiens Dominabitur Astris, also known as Anna Sprengel. 27

The letter basically tells the reader--whoever is clever enough to decode the cipher--that this old

Soror is a chief of the order “Die Goldene Dämmerung” and that the decoder should send a reply to the address of a hotel in Stuttgart, Germany. A second letter, this time in German, is sent to

Westcott congratulating him on his efforts, raising his initiatory degree, and authorizing him to start a temple of her order in England. Four more letters are eventually exchanged, including,

27 It had become the convention by this point to use the Latin frater and soror as titles for initiates, and to attach that to a meaningful phrase, or “magical motto”. These names served as useful aliases for Golden Dawn members in the ensuing years. 103 among other things, authorization to sign Sprengel’s motto, further manuscripts on rites and

degrees, and a conferral of independent authority on three chiefs that Westcott would select.

Besides himself, Westcott chooses eccentric Samuel Liddell Mathers and a high-ranking Mason,

William Robert Woodman, both members of the same groups as Westcott. Then, a final letter in

August 1890 informs Westcott that Sprengel has died and they are on their own. 28

The Golden Dawn became one of the most colorful of the British occult societies, and

like many groups of this nature, was plagued with personal conflicts, power struggles, and

psychodramas. Israel Regardie, an initiate of a much later incarnation of the Golden Dawn,

describes the society as a product of its time: “Having been founded just prior to the [18]90’s, it

incorporated within itself all the inherent faults and vices of that period. The fact that it admitted

numerous theatrical people to the ranks of its membership indicates the presence of superficiality

and self-satisfaction . . . and many of its members were incurable poseur [sic]”( What You Should

Know 39). Regardie goes on to tell of a person of high ranking who wore her full ceremonial

regalia, something only members were allowed to see, to a costume ball. Needless to say, many

flamboyant characters inhabited these societies, drawn by not only the drama of the rituals, but

by the incredible backstage drama as well. 29 The link between the Golden Dawn and the London

theatre scene continued to be strong throughout its troubled life in England, especially in the case

28 These events have been chronicled in quite a few works, including Hutton, Ellic Howe’s Magicians of the Golden Dawn , written in 1972 and Frances King’s Ritual Magic in England , written in 1970, and especially R.A. Gilbert’s The Golden Dawn Scrapbook: The Rise and Fall of a Magical Order , which provides the most textual detail, including photos of original letters and manuscripts. Hutton quite accurately describes the morass of material on ancient, medieval, and early modern magic, and the contrasting dearth of material on late modern magic. He notes that there are much more works by non-academic specialists with an aversion to footnotes, and that “[i]t is small wonder that the recent history of it [magic] has been left mainly to writers who have amassed private libraries and practical experience” (69). R.A. Gilbert, indeed, is one of these authors.

29 The scandals and psychodramas associated with the Golden Dawn are well documented by Israel Regardie in his many works on the Dawn, and by R.A. Gilbert ( The Golden Dawn: Twilight of the Magicians , The Golden Dawn Companion , and The Golden Dawn Scrapbook , and Ellic Howe ( The Magicians of the Golden Dawn ). 104 of well-known actress Florence Farr, one of the leaders of the order in later years and companion to George Bernard Shaw. In addition, one of Farr’s theatrical colleagues, and a major player behind the story of the Golden Dawn, was Annie Horniman. A failed artist, but a successful benefactor due to an inherited legacy, Horniman almost single-handedly supported

Dawn founder Samuel Mathers, and his wife Mina Bergson, until continuing conflicts over money put Horniman and Mathers at significant odds during the Dawn’s schisms. However,

Horniman’s interest in the theatre, coupled with her money, led to her role as beneficiary for the staging of some of Shaw’s plays as well as the plays of William Butler Yeats, a very active member of the Dawn for many years. In addition, with Yeats and his Irish nationalist love interest and fellow Dawn initiate Maud Gonne, Horniman was responsible for financing and founding the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, as well as the Gaiety Theatre in Manchester. This theatrical experience certainly played a large part of Horniman’s role in the Dawn. R.A. Gilbert notes that when Farr and Horniman were running things in the main London temple, their rituals were something to behold (132).

Yet the offstage drama could be as elaborate as the onstage. The major event that brought the Golden Dawn to the public’s eye was the infamous Horos trial, a media event quite well publicized in turn of the century London. Indeed, the trial was responsible for public awareness of ceremonial magick, and for events that would lead to the Golden Dawn being the first magical group to be rightfully called a pop culture phenomenon. The gist of the story is that a couple calling themselves Madame Laura and Theo Horos had succeeded in convincing Mathers that they possessed a high enough rank to receive certain “secret” initiation rituals, and they had subsequently used them for nefarious purposes. Chief among them and reason for the arrest and trial was the seduction of an underage girl. The Golden Dawn’s initiatory oath itself was 105 presented at the trial as evidence. Instantly, initiatory oaths, thrust into a lurid context of

chicanery and sexual scandal, became the object of both fear and ridicule among the press and

the reading public. 30 Mathers was called in to testify and tried to defend the reputation of the

Dawn, owning up to his mistake, but the damage had been done.

Yet the most significant aspect of this fascinating tale is the chicanery itself. Evidently, the Horos couple was Americans Frank and Editha Jackson, who had established quite a reputation as scam artists, cheating and seducing naïve young women interested in mysticism. In their world travels in places like India and South Africa, the Jacksons had accumulated any number of aliases and identities, as well as spurious mystical groups, the foremost being the so- called “Theocratic Unity,” where Editha had obtained the title “The Swami Viva Ananda.” The trial, with the Jacksons melodramatically providing their own defense, certainly proved fertile ground for satirists, and though the prosecution made it clear that the Theocratic Unity and the

Golden Dawn were not one and the same, the whole notion of occult orders fell under fire by the general public (15). The fact that these two maneuvered themselves into the Golden Dawn at exactly the right time, in the midst of the early schisms, and their flamboyance did not alert

Mathers to their fraud, points to the very nature of magical work at the time. Not too long after the Horos debacle, Aleister Crowley, an erstwhile member of the Golden Dawn unpopular with his more conservative colleagues, picked up the mantle of public scandal, and indeed, thrived on his over-the-top tabloid persona. While some occultists, like Crowley, were quite showy in their social performances, and some were more reserved, content to work silently in the shadows, all form a crucial part of what I call the “(oc)cult of personality.” These individuals walked a thin

30 One of the most interesting plates in Gilbert’s book is the greeting card produced as a joke and parody of the Golden Dawn oath, punning on the word “neophyte” with a picture of a woman’s leg under a skirt with a knee exposed (104). 106 line between personal spiritual development and a public persona often at odds with that development. Though the Jacksons used their hoodwinking abilities to steal, cheat, and seduce, their method and style were uncomfortably close that that of “legitimate” occultists. Thus, the

Golden Dawn is important for our study not only because of its systematization of occultism as practice, but because of their strong emphasis on individual personality and performance of self.

This emphasis certainly carried over as movements like Wicca began to form.

Gardnerian Wicca

After the Witchcraft and Vagrancy Acts were repealed in England in 1951, the strange figure of Gerald Gardner, a British civil servant, suddenly appeared in the press, talking about

Witchcraft. His story basically consists of his discovery of a traditional Witch coven descended from an ancient pagan religion that had remained in hiding for many years. Having been initiated by a wealthy Hampshire lady, dubbed “Old Dorothy,” some years later he had been given permission by his fellow witches to speak and write about their religion. Some of the rituals and beliefs of these witches first appeared in Gardner’s novel, High Magic’s Aid , published in 1949.

Three years after witchcraft was no longer illegal, Gardner dropped the guise of novelist and assumed that of an unbiased anthropologist reporting on his discoveries when he published

Witchcraft Today .

Of course, none of this occurred in a vacuum and a series of texts laid the foundation for

Gardner’s work. Sir James Frazer’s exhaustive Golden Bough sparked much popular imagination in Edwardian England in its many editions published between 1890 and 1915. The desire for folklore reached a peak in 1899, when the American traveler Charles Godfrey Leland published

Aradia, Gospel of the Witches . Leland, notoriously unreliable as a scholar, claimed to have 107 recorded stories from a gypsy woman named Maddalena, a tale that Hutton, like many others, believes was fabricated ( Triumph 147). In 1921, the anthropologist Margaret Murray published the controversial The Witch Cult in Western Europe , claiming that ancient witch cults survived Christian persecution. Like Frazer, Murray was lambasted by scholarly critics yet embraced by the popular masses – so much so that twelve years later, Murray follows up with

The God of the Witches , published by a popular press and aimed at a mass audience rather than a scholarly one. Finally, in 1948, the poet Robert Graves continues the theme of witchcraft, fertility cults, sacrificed kings, and goddess with his non-fiction prose work, The White Goddess .

All these sources are quite obviously direct influences on Gardner. In fact, one could say that

Gardner’s story of a surviving underground witch cult was a direct application of Murray’s ideas

(Hutton, Triumph 225).

Gardner’s Wicca seemed to have less to do with so-called “low” magic – the practices of rural folk traditions that it seemed to promote – and more in common with the ceremonial traditions of the Golden Dawn and Freemasonry. For instance, Ronald Hutton reveals the source of the witches’ primary symbol, the pentacle (a circumscribed five-pointed star) as a Hermetic contribution, later modified by Lévi and Mathers (77). In another case, a common refrain in

Pagan ritual, the archaic “so mote it be,” is borrowed from the craft guild tradition and later

Freemasonry. Initiatory degrees and initiation rites are also strikingly similar to that of

Freemasonry, including confronting the initiate with a dagger and asking him to take a vow of secrecy under the metaphorical threat of violence (55). In fact, both Freemasonry and Wicca are referred to as “the craft.” To further complicate matters, one of the ongoing origin tales involve

Gardner either lifting rituals from Aleister Crowley, or even more fantastically, commissioning

Crowley to write them. Though Hutton proves this to be unlikely, Gardner’s association with the 108 German magical group, the OTO (Ordo Templi Orientis), an organization that Crowley

headed up at one time, seems ample evidence that Crowley, in his later years, had an effect on

Gardner (220). Gardner’s primary rule for witches, known as the Wiccan rede, is “’An it harm

none, do what thou wilt.” This phrase is certainly an addendum to Crowley’s infamous maxim,

“do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law” but with an extra flair for the archaic along

with an additional ethical cushion. 31 Hutton also provides further examples of Gardner’s

plagiarism in his early work, such as the novel High Magic’s Aid , which begins to establish

Gardner’s notions of ritual and the roles of men and women in those rituals. Yet, the magic in the

novel was clearly borrowed from Mathers’ translation of The Key of Solomon , with the exception

of elaborate descriptions of initiations for the first and second degree levels of the witches who

had supposedly given him permission to write. 32

Regardless of the pedigree of Gardner’s rites, his practice captured the imagination of

people looking for a religion that reflected a burgeoning interest in Paganism, nationalistic

folklore, and Goddess worship. Many of Gardner’s innovations remain with Wiccan practice

today. To name only a few, we have Gardner’s attempt to provide an ethical basis for the

practice of the Wiccan faith, through the “An’ it harm none” section of the Wiccan rede, in lieu

of a single authoritative text which is usually a defining factor for monotheistic religions. We

also have Gardner’s emphasis on the position of the High Priestess, as embodied in Doreen

Valiente, who was responsible for writing many of Gardner’s “traditional” liturgies in the Book

31 ‘An’ is an archaic form of ‘if’. Today’s Wiccans often mistakenly say it as “And it harm none” (Berger 8).

32 In a personal letter, Gardner claims that he originally included the third-degree initiation, as well, but the witches were vehemently opposed to the inclusion. But Gardner gives no explanation as to why the first two initiations were allowed (Hutton, Triumph 226).

109 of Shadows, including the well-known Charge of the Goddess, based on text in Leland’s

Aradia and various quotations from Crowley. 33 Gardner’s notion of performing ritual nude or

“skyclad” is also a well-known part of Wiccan ritual, though this is by no means prevalent. 34 The

Masonic elements of the Gardnerian initiation rite, including taking the vow of secrecy at the

point of a dagger, are still intact and were part of my Wiccan initiation ceremony, while other

elements of Gardnerian practice, like ritual scourging, have faded.

In England, Gardner’s self-outing paved the way for figures such as Alex Sanders to

emerge into the spotlight, with his claims of initiation by his grandmother. 35 Unlike Gardner,

who usually wrote his own publicity, Sanders had various journalists do it for him. It was one of

these pieces that proclaimed Sanders “King of the Witches” in 1969. Sanders was so charismatic

a figure that one of the reporters, Stewart Farrar, famously became a witch himself after the 1971

publication of his book on Sanders and his ritual practices, What Witches Do: A Modern Coven

Revealed (Hutton, Triumph 328). In this text, Farrar coined the term “Alexandrian tradition” to describe Sanders’ practice, and along with his wife Janet, who he met in Sanders’ coven, published several texts, like A Witches’ Bible (1981) that would virtually replace Gardner’s

“Book of Shadows” as a liturgical primary for Wiccan ritual. 36 Raymond Buckland, another

33 The Charge, still recited in today’s Wiccan rituals, is mostly a statement of adoration of the Goddess, along with directives for that worship. Significantly, Starhawk “translated” the clunky, archaic language of Valiente’s version into more contemporary language and changed the text from a third-person description to a first- person declaration ( Spiral Dance 14).

34 Some groups certainly do still practice nude. However, in my experience, this has either been in settings that are already clothing-optional, like festivals on private lands, or the nudity is in a proscribed section of a rite, as in the initiation that Nikki Bado-Fralick describes in Coming to the Edge of the Circle .

35 Chas Clifton has recently reminded us that Gardner’s form of witchcraft was not the only one on the scene at the time. Rather, Gardner’s witchcraft acted “as a powerful magnet aligns iron filings within its field,” thus subsuming other witchcraft traditions to a more cohesive Pagan religion (19).

110 British witch, is also a prominent figure in Wiccan history and is credited with bringing

Wicca to American shores, specifically the East Coast, in the early 1960s. In that time, Buckland was practically the voice for Wicca in the United States, where he eventually started his own tradition, Seax-Wicca, influenced by Saxon folklore. Buckland’s Complete Book of Witchcraft , his so-called “Big Blue Book,” was published and 1986 and became the primary introductory text for American Wiccans for many years. However, it was Wicca’s migration to the West

Coast that changed its character irrevocably.

Feminist Witchcraft

Feminist witchcraft, a movement originally focused in southern California as part of the growing 1960s and 1970s counterculture, was in many ways a reaction to all of the aforementioned traditions, especially Gardner’s formulation. Feminist witches, though far from being a monolithic group, tended to emphasize the Goddess as a primary divine force and concern themselves with the political issues espoused by the feminism of the time, particularly equal rights for women. In these groups, women actually held positions of power and were not just token cohorts to the men who were really running the show, as was the case with Doreen

Valiente before she broke with Gardner (Davy 129). Foremost among these outspoken figures was Zsuzsanna (“Z”) Budapest, a Hungarian immigrant turned lesbian feminist who formed the aptly named Susan B. Anthony coven in Los Angeles in 1971. Budapest’s practice, which she called “Dianic Witchcraft,” emphasized strident gender separatism with women-only covens, a

36 By the late 1970s, the Farrars had broken from Sanders and promoted their “Algard” tradition, which combined elements of the Alexandrian and Gardnerian traditions, along with their own additions. They ultimately concluded that the Alexandrian tradition was merely an adaptation of Gardnerian Wicca, despite Sanders’ claims to have been inherited his tradition from his grandmother (Davy 131). 111 reputation that continues today, despite the fact that Budapest has since softened her stance and has led groups and rituals with mixed genders (Davy 135). Miriam Simos, who began practicing in southern California before she eventually met Budapest and was influenced by her, became the feminist Wiccan author known as Starhawk in the late 1970s. She helped form the

Reclaiming Collective, a feminist witchcraft training and networking group, in 1979, coinciding with the publication of her now classic The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religions of the Great Goddess . Subsequently, Starhawk became well known in the witchcraft community for her activist politics after being arrested in protest of a nuclear power plant in 1981. Her influence on paganism and activism, particularly with regard to environmental issues and consensus politics, has been immeasurable.

Yet, the title of her famous book reveals a method for mythologizing history and anthropology not unlike Gardner’s. Starhawk’s creative interpretations of history helped form what Carol Barner-Barry calls the “Pagan mythical basis” (40). These three myths are “the mother times,” where witches imagine a peaceful, matriarchal society untainted by patriarchal domination and aggression, “the Christian conversion,” a particular story in which Christians are always cast as violent oppressors of peaceful, rural Pagan practitioners of the “Old Religion,” and finally the most potent, “The Burning Times,” emphasizing the witch trials of Western

Europe as events that embodied a kind of holocaust for women. The story of the “Burning

Times,” with its image of the persecuted witch burned at the stake while spurning patriarchal culture, was a powerful one for feminists seeking a spiritual path free of male oppression.

Controversy surrounding the reality of these foundational myths, particularly when historical, anthropological, and archaeological evidence was in dispute, created much tension between feminist Witchcraft and the academic community, and between feminist Witches and non- 112 Wiccan feminists. Particularly the revitalization of Margaret Murray’s theory of persecuted witchcraft as an ancient, underground religious cult became a contentious point among practitioners, although since the 1980s, most of the movement’s prominent figures have since emphasized the mythic and metaphorical aspect of these stories over their historical factuality

(Hutton, Witches 265).

Overall, Witchcraft and Paganism have offered an alternative for both women and men who reject mainstream religions. Many organizations have emerged from these movements. The

Church of All Worlds (CAW), an organization deriving its name and basing its politics on

Robert Heinlein’s science fiction novel, Stranger in a Strange Land , was one of the earliest.

CAW was known for publishing the Green Egg journal, a magazine with one of the first forums for practitioners to exchange ideas and opinions and actually popularized the term Pagan as a broader term to embrace the diverse spiritual paths of its readers (Berger, Witchcraft 51). The

Covenant of the Goddess is another long standing umbrella organization that emphasizes a broad range of Pagan paths, and is one of the first organizations to provide clergy certification for its members. Circle Sanctuary, a Pagan networking organization based in Wisconsin, provides resources and information for Pagans involved in civil liberties cases, as well as sponsoring teaching and festivals on its 200-acre site. Circle Sanctuary, like Earth Spirit Community, the

Association for Consciousness Exploration, and Elf-Lore Family, also organize major festivals where Pagans gather in campground settings to network, celebrate, worship and learn.

Enchantment and Disenchantment: Occultism at the Cusp of Modernity

Inevitably, political and cultural questions emerge from this grand occult narrative.

Indeed, none of the aforementioned occult movements was removed from the concerns and 113 issues of their respective cultures and time periods. Many scholars have recently addressed

these questions, attempting to determine where to locate occultism and esotericism on the

cultural map, and whether occultism as both philosophy and practice extends the goals of

modernity or breaks away from them. For example, Alex Owen, in her work The Place of

Enchantment: British Occultism and the Culture of the Modern (2004), has shown how the

occult revival of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was inextricably tied to debates

over modernity and the Enlightenment project. Max Weber’s famous 1917 speech about the

“disenchantment of the world” argued that the secularization and intellectualization of the

Western world had eclipsed the magical and mysterious with the rational and the technological.

By severing the relationship between humans and the supernatural, modernity had provided an

“ambiguous freedom” for society to invest the world with its own meaning (Owen 11).

Yet, while this secularizing process was happening during Weber’s time, occultism had exploded on the scene, especially in Britain. Owen’s main argument is that the popularity of occultism at this time was not an anomaly. Rather, according to Owen, “the ‘new’ occultism was one manifestation of a secularizing process that spells neither the inevitable decline nor the irreconcilable loss of significant religious beliefs and behaviors in a modern age. What it does indicate is the way in which the search for spiritual meaning can renew itself and adapt to the changing climate of a secularizing culture” (11). Throughout The Place of Enchantment , Owen provides fascinating histories of the Victorian magicians, particularly Aleister Crowley, demonstrating that for many of these people, magic and occultism were “the compliment to social conscience and political engagement” (26). Therefore, Owen questions the overall 114 disenchantment of the world and offers examples in which fin-de-siècle magicians continually re-enchanted the social, cultural and political world. 37

Owen makes several salient points about the place of Victorian occultism within the broader concerns of cultural analysis. She begins with the premise that occultism should be viewed as an essential part of the development of modernity, instead of a “retrogressive throwback or fringe aberration” (15). Secondly, Victorian occultists regarded their spiritual pursuits as inextricable from their social and political concerns, particularly sexual politics.

Noting the appeal of occultism to both men and women at the turn of the century, Owens contends that

Occultism was itself bound up with a spiritualized vision of social change that called

upon those ideals of the period, and offered a “new” religiosity capable of outstripping

the conventional Victorian association of femininity with a domesticated spirituality. At

the same time, precisely because occultism was a spiritual movement, it appeared not to

fly in the face of a more conservative position on women’s place in the moral and

temporal order of things. (87)

Thus the occultism of the time allowed for both traditional and progressive political positions, as evidenced by Golden Dawn leaders, who ranged from “the aristocratic pretensions and martial leanings of MacGregor Mathers to the socialist interests of Florence Farr” (61).

Third, Owens maintains that “fin-de-siècle occultism was centrally concerned with a renegotiation of self that sought an accommodation with a unifying and transcendental

37 Owen particularly chronicles how members of the Golden Dawn and the Theosophical Society were progressive political activists, feminists, vegetarians, anti-vaccinationists and antivivisectionists, and were involved with various humanitarian and socialist causes. Yeats and other Golden Dawn members were also highly involved in the cause of Irish nationalism (24-6). 115 spirituality even as it underscored the self’s multiplicity and contingency” (116). She further demonstrates that despite differences in language, occultism’s investigations into the self and self-consciousness at the time had much in common with the more secular concerns of psychology and the sciences. Finally, Owens argues that occultists’ attempts to reconcile the rational and the irrational through a measured approach to the metaphysical firmly placed them in the realm of modernity. These occultists “were in thrall to an Enlightenment insistence on the supremacy of human reason even though they challenged dominant definitions of reason, and were similarly sympathetic to the possibilities of a worldview in which religious superstition is abandoned for a reasoned if spiritually enlightened self-knowledge” (239). She further claims that occultism in some ways prefigures the postmodern critique of reason laid out by the likes of

Foucault and Lyotard, although these occultists’ adherence to the idea of an ultimate truth and objective reality stops short of postmodernism (240).

Modern witchcraft followed a similar path, reflecting the social and political concerns of its practitioners. Ronald Hutton reminds us that despite popular notions of witchcraft as an anti- establishment religion, its original form in mid twentieth-century England had more in common with right-wing ideology, specifically “nostalgia for a better past, elitism and suspicion of the masses, and a desire for a free market, in magic and sex as in economics” (361). Yet, it is the

“dislike for the modern world” and its increasing industrialization and urbanization, Hutton claims, that allowed for a broad interpretation of the politics of witchcraft. For some, like

Gardner’s contemporary Alex Sanders, their practice was a romanticization of monarchy and hierarchy, while for others, the practice could emphasize egalitarian and communitarian values.

The latter was certainly the realm of American witches, who took Gardner’s practice and brought it together with recent ideas about feminist spirituality and the worship of a Goddess. The 116 practice of witchcraft, like the Golden Dawn’s ceremonial magick before it, could encompass both worlds. Hutton concludes “pagan witchcraft traveled from Britain to the United States as a branch of radical conservatism; it returned as a branch of radical socialism” (361). However, as we will see, many practitioners of witchcraft and paganism do not reject “the modern world” at all, but rather work with it in ways that exhibit an almost postmodern savvy.

For instance, many scholars who write on contemporary paganism and witchcraft struggle to place the practice within the discourses of modernism and postmodernism.

Practitioner and scholar Dennis Carpenter argues that paganism is postmodern when it draws from “premodern” traditions to solve the problems of modernity (68). Here, Carpenter cites

David Ray Griffin’s formulation of postmodernism as a “creative synthesis and revision of modern and premodern truths and values, including premodern notions of a divine reality, cosmic meaning, and an enchanted Nature” (42). These premodern notions implicitly invoke

Weber’s characterization of modernism as disenchantment. Ultimately, Carpenter views the re- enchantment of Nature as a postmodern move simply because it undoes the dualistic mechanization of modernity and recreates a “deep ecological vision” of interconnectedness for the planet (65). Thus, Pagan practitioners move beyond modernity by applying this notion of interconnectedness to political and environmental action. As Carpenter rightly notes, this re- enchantment is at the core of magical politics and activism.

Other practitioner/scholars, like Loretta Orion, seem to share Carpenter’s assertions about the postmodernity of paganism and witchcraft. However, scholars who are not practitioners tend to question the postmodernity of contemporary witchcraft and paganism (102). Some, like feminist historian Diana Purkiss, argue that witchcraft is actually a reaction against postmodernism. In her critique of contemporary witchcraft’s use of the “Burning Times” story, 117 Purkiss contends that witches like Starhawk “[evoke] an unchanging identity in an unchanging world,” claiming to offer “the ideal antidote to the fragmented postmodern self”

(20). Similarly, Susan Greenwood asserts that practitioners’ search for a “true identity beneath the superficiality of contemporary culture” constitutes a reaction against postmodernity ( Magic

10). Other ethnographers who study contemporary practitioners and communities acknowledge that Witchcraft and Paganism seem postmodern on the surface. Practitioners tend to reject rationalism and positivism, foregrounding the constructed and polysemous nature of the self with complex yet problematic understandings of identity, community and culture. This kind of play with identity and community becomes most apparent in ritual and festival, which are often pastiches of various cultural markers.

Yet, ethnographers argue that despite its postmodern trappings, witchcraft and paganism are products of late modernity, rather than postmodernity. Helen Berger argues that the supposed postmodern values of Wicca are actually a logical development of Enlightenment ideals, demonstrated by practitioners “applying the methodological skepticism of the Enlightenment to rationalism itself” ( Community 123). In her study of Pagan festival gatherings, Sarah Pike makes the most nuanced argument that places the “postmodern self” that practitioners construct in tension with their desire for a “deep” or “real” Self at the center of practice. She claims that

Paganism may at first seem like a postmodern practice, but Pagans’ “emphasis – especially at festivals - on creating home and tribe is often in conflict with the demands of personal autonomy, and what seems to be a free-floating, constantly reinvented self is quickly constrained by the desire for authenticity and tradition” ( Earthly Bodies 222). According to Pike, practitioners are in constant negotiation between their longings for more traditional communities and their desires 118 for a uniquely constructed self. As we will see, these tensions play out quite explicitly in debates about initiation and the definition of the initiated self.

Arthur Versluis specifically characterizes this construction of the occult self as a search for connection. He claims that Western esotericism differs from modernity in that it encourages the individual to “leave behind modern objectifying preconceptions of how one is separate from nature and the divine, moving instead toward ever deeper understanding of how one is indivisible from these” ( Restoring Paradise 6). Western occult thought often emphasizes the notion of union with nature, the Other, and the Divine, and eschews objectification as a symptom of corrupt modernity. This theme often recurs in response to debates over magical practice, in which critics accuse magicians of manipulating objects and other individuals for their own gains.

Not only is manipulation not the goal, Versluis argues, but esotericism’s goal of gnosis is antithetical to objectification. However, this goal, ostensibly a union between the individual and the universe or the Divine, is the result of the esotericist’s quest for a return to paradisiacal origins, as the title of his work suggests. Thus, the opposition between esotericism and modernity is certainly not unproblematic. While esotericism may reject the grand modernist narrative of the progress of rational humanity, it embraces the grand narrative of the Fall and the quest for paradise’s return. As Jean-François Lyotard established in The Postmodern Condition , the use of these grand narratives is characteristic of modernity. Therefore, it would seem that esotericism is one of many competing discourses within modernity.

David Allen Harvey similarly asserts that occultism is an “alternate form of modernity” and that “the changes . . . from the more homogenous and Western-oriented esotericism of the modern era and the more diffuse, heterogenous, and multicultural spirituality of the New Age are but an example (a microcosm, as it were) of the challenges which postmodernity has presented to 119 the old European political and intellectual order over the past half century” (32). Some scholars have suggested that the more recent practice of chaos magick represents the most extreme postmodern challenge practitioners have presented to modernity (Vitale 50). Inspired by the work of surrealist painter and occultist A.O. Spare, roughly a contemporary of Aleister

Crowley, and viewed through the lens of 1970s psychedelia, chaos magicians tend to incorporate elements of popular culture, psychedelia, science, and cyberculture into their work. Though chaos magick is outside of this dissertation’s purview, surface elements of this patchwork style of magic have certainly made their way into more mainstream magical practice. This is particularly true at festivals, where rituals based on Bill the Cat (from the 1980’s comic strip

Bloom County ) or Jim Morrison as a Dionysian figure might occur. 38

Whether modern or postmodern, occultism as discourse and cultural practice is certainly highly visible on the contemporary scene, in the media, on the bookshelf and online. Yet, scholars still tend to characterize occultism as a marginal practice. B.J. Gibbons claims that occultism has survived because of its increased marginalization since the Enlightenment period, not in spite of it. He argues “Occultism no longer in any sense expresses the central tendencies of the wider culture, as it had arguably done in the sixteenth century. On the contrary, to adopt the occult philosophy has come to involve a conscious choice to opt out of mainstream culture”

(137). Further, this marginalization tends to become a badge of honor for occult initiates (142).

Gibbons’ argument that individuals are drawn to occult practice because it offers the opportunity to “rebel” against mainstream culture is certainly valid in many cases. However, I argue throughout this work that mainstream culture itself is always already caught up in occultism and

38 I encountered both these rituals at the Pagan Spirit Gathering festival in 1999. One might also argue that the intense fire circles at these festivals operate on principles of chaos magick, a concept I am currently researching. 120 that contemporary occult practices may simply be an imaginative way to engage that culture with the tools that the culture itself provides.

Conclusion

As we have seen, a vast array of scholars have attempted to establish occultism as either a marginalized discourse hidden within Western rationalism or as a discourse that reflects the major intellectual concerns of its time. I have outlined these discursive constructions to introduce the disciplinary issues at stake in approaching occultism from a scholarly viewpoint, especially focusing on how scholars construct occultism as a discourse of late modernity or postmodernity.

By examining the discourse of occultism in this way, we may understand how discussions of modernity and postmodernity, some of the most contested discourses of the nineteenth and twentieth century, have significantly influenced occultism’s position vis-à-vis normative Western academic thought. Indeed this notion of occultism as a margin approaching a center reflects the position of the initiatory candidate who stands on the outside of the lodge, awaiting admission into the inner circle of higher, secret knowledge.

I have also provided a brief genealogy of the major initiatory occult traditions that influence contemporary practice. When a candidate of the Western Mystery Tradition enters an initiatory space, he or she is expected to at least have an understanding of the history of that tradition, and I have provided the basic signposts for that understanding. When comparing these various occult traditions throughout history, it is immediately apparent how much they all have in common. Mainly, they share a fiercely nostalgic desire for a lost time and place, what

Christopher Lehrich calls a longing for “Ægypt,” an imagined mystical land that occultists

121 construct upon the ruins of history ( The Occult Mind 2). Whether it is Renaissance

Hermetists dreaming of ancient Egypt, mystical Christian occultists dreaming of the Garden of

Eden, or feminist Witches dreaming of a matriarchal culture, each of these occult traditions have attempted to recreate an imagined past in order to more fully approach a utopian future. And this transformed society is ultimately reserved for those who have access to the secrets. These traditions struggle with questions of authenticity, especially with regards to their founding texts.

As we will see, these traditions often use that struggle to their advantage, creating mystery by playing on these uncertainties. Finally, these traditions are invariably syncretic, bringing together beliefs, symbology, and practices from a wide range of sources. This bricolage further points to the syncretic methods of occult practitioners who create practical systems out of these separate units. Active imagination applied to occult narratives and the method of bricolage in interpreting and adapting occult knowledge points to a performative approach to esoteric concepts that we will see developed further in subsequent chapters.

To that end, I will demonstrate how changes in occult practice and performance present new challenges to the grand modernist narrative of gnostic union, not the least of which is a significant revision in the deployment of the term “occultism.” As both a symbolic and a performative mode, initiation is central to these discussions. Practitioners’ approaches and responses to initiation, along with the concomitant discussions about tradition and transmission, help to define the practice of occultism today. In the next chapter, we will investigate various forms of textual initiatic transmission and how reading and writing perform as occult modalities. 122 Chapter Three

“Every Object Hides a Secret”: Occult Textuality, Language and Signs

In our earlier example of the Golden Dawn initiation, when the initiators raise the hoodwink from the candidate’s eyes, they reveal various symbols which are meant to have an impact on the candidate. These symbols may have power because they are new revelations.

However, the more likely scenario is that the candidate has studied these symbols prior to the rite. They have an effect because of a combination of the candidate’s internalized associations with the symbol and the placement of that symbol at a significant stage of the rite. One example of this use of symbolism in my own initiation to the Hermetic Order of Chicago is when I was given a version of the Death card from the Tarot deck and told to meditate on this symbol while isolated in preparation for the rite. The Death Tarot card, a potent symbol of radical transformation, pointed to the notion that my old “self” was dying, to be replaced by a reborn, initiated self. Thus, I was placed into a particular narrative of death, rebirth, and alchemical transformation. 1

While in isolation, I could also hear my initiators preparing the space for my initiation.

Many initiatory groups use languages other than English in their rites. Whether Latin, Hebrew, or the “barbarous names” of medieval demonology, the use of these languages invariably sets a mood indicating something out of the ordinary is happening. But there is more to it. Occultists speak these languages in their rites in an attempt to reestablish a more pure form of communication with the divine. Further, these languages indicate the nostalgic occult desire to return to a time when such communication was possible, a sort of pre-Babel state. On a magical

1 In this particular version of the Death card, used by the Golden Dawn, the skeleton is crowned with a pot filled with gold, signifying the alchemical act of transforming dross into gold.

123 level, practitioners believe that the proper use of language aids in the transformation being enacted. For instance, the Hermetic Order of Chicago used the Enochian language, a complex lexicon supposedly dictated by angelic beings to the Renaissance magician John Dee. I had been familiar with some basic Enochian invocations used by the Order in their public rites. But the more elaborate use of Enochian in the initiation rite created a much more charged atmosphere.

Practitioners might even say that the use of this language creates a vortex of sorts, a conduit through which divine energy can act upon the candidate, in order to transform him or her and thus lend power to the initiation.

In an occult context, then, language and symbol become magical tools and reading and writing become magical acts. From ancient cultures like Egypt, where the act of writing was considered sacred and mysterious, to the current proliferation of occult texts on the Internet and in the marketplace, issues surrounding textuality are foundational to the study of magickal practice and occult history. Thus, we must explore how occultists incorporate language and symbol, and the texts that contain them, into their practice. Not only are these aspects of occult practice essential components of initiation, but occultists may often see the acts of reading and writing as themselves initiatic. In the previous chapter, we noted Arthur Versluis’s assertion that for Western esotericism, in the absence of an unbroken initiatory chain, texts fulfill the purpose of training initiates, a task that would have fallen to the ancient priesthood or mystery schools. In this chapter, we further explore how reading and writing are both central metaphors and essential methods for occult practice that are occult in themselves. A performative understanding of textuality, in which the magician engages in a participatory process that endlessly pursues knowledge of the divine, illuminates these methods. This pursuit is based on the notion that the universe can be fathomed through the literal and metaphorical act of reading, and that writing

124 creates a vessel that can carry the secrets to the worthy initiate. The medieval concept of

correspondences, and its use by natural philosophers and hermeticists, provides the foundation

for an analogical approach to knowledge, while a historiographical approach to Renaissance

magus John Dee supplies us with a model for the occult performer and his approach to textuality.

Finally, a more in-depth approach to Kabbalistic theories of sacred language reveals an occult

and initiatic tendency within textuality itself. What these various elements begin to reveal is that

occult hiddenness is indeed just the surface of the occult operation.

“Signs and Similitudes”: Reading the Universe

In the aforementioned Three Books of Life , Marsilio Ficino explains the philosophy behind the systems of occult correspondence: “Everywhere nature is a sorceress . . . in that she everywhere entices particular things by particular foods, just as she attracts heavy things by the power of the earth’s center, light things by the power of the Moon’s sphere, leaves by heat, roots by moisture, and so on. By means of this attraction . . . the world binds itself together” (97). Thus elements, herbs, stones, and other natural phenomena are bound together by a mysterious law of attraction, a process that Ficino characterizes as sexual and gendered, that the magician can utilize for his purposes, if he understands correspondence. 2 Faivre describes this particular occult

method as a method of “reading” the world: “These correspondences, considered more or less

veiled at first sight, are therefore, intended to be read and deciphered. The entire universe is a

huge theater of mirrors, an ensemble of hieroglyphs to be decoded. Everything is a sign;

2 This method of correspondences is still a major part of training in ceremonial magick and Wicca. For instance, Wiccans look for correspondences to the four elements (air, water, fire, and earth) while ceremonial magicians look for correspondences to the ten “sephirot” or spheres on the Tree of Life. One of Aleister Crowley’s highly referenced writings is a document that exhaustively lists correspondences to each of the sephiroht and paths on the Tree, including information like astrological signs, planet, elements, Tarot cards and Hebrew names. This was published as 777 and Other Qabalistic Writings of Aleister Crowley (ed. Israel Regardie. York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser, 1977). Ultimately, these correspondences can be used in magickal workings.

125 everything conceals and exudes mystery; every object hides a secret” ( Access 14). Therefore, the magician “reads” the signs and correspondences and then acts according to his interpretations of these signs. But this is not just simply reading a vast book; the process is more akin to creating a lexicon, a repertoire of correspondences from which to draw the necessary connections, applying them to the particular task at hand. Furthermore, the universe is a performance space, a theater, literally a space to view the mysteries.

In his preface to The Order of Things , Foucault outlines how we think about

correspondence and categorization in general:

Order is, at one and the same time, that which is given in things as their inner law, the

hidden network that determines the way they confront one another, and also that which

has no existence except in the grid created by a glance, an examination, a language; and it

is only in the blank spaces of this grid that order manifests itself in depth as though

already there, waiting in silence for the moment of its expression. (xx)

The occult language here is undeniable as Foucault describes a “hidden network” in which order

waits in silence for its own manifestation. Occult knowledge, by its very nature, waits beneath

the surface for the magus to make it manifest, interpret it, and apply it to the vast lexicon that is

the universe, itself an exhaustive text for the magus to read.

Throughout the chapter entitled “The Prose of the World,” Foucault confirms this

particular esoteric textuality. Focusing on the study of natural philosophy within a Renaissance

(by which he mostly means 16 th century) framework, he delves into the notion of correspondence

and resemblance in nature, in which “the space inhabited by immediate resemblances becomes

like a vast open book; it bristles with written signs; every page is seen to be filled with strange

figures that intertwine and in some places repeat themselves. All that remains is to decipher

126 them” (27). Applying this textual metaphor to the study of nature and the universe,

philosophers and magicians “read” the marks on phenomena and search for the hidden

connections between them. This method of reading is akin to a kind of divination, interpreting

signs in nature, like ancient priests telling the future by examining the entrails of the animal

sacrifice or observing the flights of birds.

For Foucault, the system of correspondence was about a particular understanding of

signification. Unlike the binary relation between signifier and signified that became solidified

after the Enlightenment, the Renaissance notion of representation was a more complex, ternary

relation – between visible marks (the signifier), the content they indicate (the signified) and the

similitude that links the two. Thus, Foucault argues, the neo-Platonic relation between the

macrocosm and microcosm, as in the Hermetic principle “as above, so below” was essential to

the esotericism inherent in Renaissance knowledge: “In an episteme in which signs and

similitudes were wrapped around one in another in an endless spiral, it was essential that the

relation of microcosm to macrocosm should be conceived as both the guarantee of that

knowledge and the limit of its expansion. It was that same necessity that obliged knowledge to

accept magic and erudition on the same level” ( Order 32). In fact, Foucault continues, magic and the pursuit of knowledge go hand in hand in this episteme: “Divination is not a rival form of knowledge; it is part of the main body of knowledge itself. Moreover, these signs that must be interpreted indicate what is hidden only in so far as they resemble it; and it is not possible to act upon those marks without at the same time operating upon that which is secretly indicated by them” ( Order 32-33). Thus, the ternary relation between signifier, signified and similitude dictated the way in which Renaissance scholars conceived representation, pursued knowledge, interpreted signs, and read texts. Occult philosophy was not simply the territory of the magician

127 casting spells, but was inherent to knowledge itself in the Western world before the

Enlightenment.

If “reading” the world was the primary metaphor scholars utilized when considering

representation, and that representation employed complex systems of correspondence, language

itself must play a central role in this interweaving of “signs and similitudes.” This topic is what

spurred esoteric philosophers to seek out a language that could most closely represent this

signification. For Renaissance esotericists, Hebrew was the closest one could get to God’s

originary language of similitude and resemblance, in which words resembled the things that

Adam named in the Garden of Eden. Pursuit of the hidden meaning behind such language,

therefore, became a primary focus for natural philosophers and occultists. Modeling their work

after Jewish Kabbalistic scholars, who focused on the language of the Torah , Western philosophers began to study language through the method of cabala, a Christianized version of the esoteric practice. Foucault further outlines the implications of such a pursuit:

For it was very possible that before Babel, before the Flood, there had already existed a

form of writing composed of the marks of nature itself, with the result that its characters

would have had the power to act upon things directly, to attract them or repel them, to

represent their properties, their virtues, and their secrets. A primitively natural writing, of

which certain forms of esoteric knowledge, and the cabala first and foremost, may

perhaps have preserved the scattered memory and were now attempting to retrieve its

long dormant powers. Esoterism in the 16 th century is a phenomenon of the written word,

not the spoken word. ( Order 38-39)

Thus, written language itself, specifically the written language of God, contained the hidden secrets of the universe, and since this was a language based on complex correspondences,

128 scholars had to employ various methods of reading that language. The pursuit of such a

lexicon became a primary obsession of Renaissance scholars who were determined to decipher

the code behind the mysterious marks of God’s language.

One of the methods for discovering that code involved assigning numerical values to

Hebrew letters and playing with the combinations of numbers and letters. This method, known as

gematria, was developed by the 12 th century Spanish Jew, Abraham Abulafia, who used the numerical combinations, established in the fourth-century Kabbalistic text known as the Sefer

Yetzirah , as the basis for a series of meditations on the names of God and the angels. Abulafia’s work coincided with both the writing of the Zohar , a foundational Kabbalistic text, and the development of an art similar to gematria by Spanish Christian philosopher and mystic Ramon

Lull. Instead of Hebrew, Lull used Latin. Like Abulafia’s meditations, Lull’s art was a way to establish correspondences between elements and mystical concepts by determining relative numerical value (Yates, Occult Philosophy 12). This trend was to continue several centuries later, when Jews migrated to Italy after their expulsion from Spain. The cross-pollination of

Jewish and Christian mysticism resulted in a form of Christian Kabbalah, popularized by

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. 3 Pico, like Ficino was part of the neo-Platonist tradition in

Florence that had benefited from the discovery of the Corpus Hermeticum . Building upon

Abulafia’s system of gematria, Pico followed a similar technique of using numbers representing

Hebrew letters. The numbers that make up a word or phrase can be added together, creating a mathematical sum. Words or phrases with identical sums are then connected and interpreted in

3 Though these are not hard and fast rules, scholars usually use the spelling ‘kabbalah’ to indicate specifically Jewish practices and ‘cabala’ when referring to the Christianized version of the former. A third permutation is ‘qabalah,’ which usually indicates the syncretic Golden Dawn version of the teachings favored by ceremonial magicians (like Lon Milo DuQuette).

129 order to find subtle meanings in the text. Depending on how the letters are combined,

arranged, recombined, and rearranged, an innumerable set of hidden meanings can be discovered by the mystic. 4 The building blocks of these mystical operations are the holy names of God used

in Scripture. Any possible letter combinations are always predicated upon these holy names, the

most important being the Tetragrammaton: YHVH, Yod-He-Vav-Heh , the unspoken four lettered

name of God, the sacred and unknown acronym. These four letters are the source for both the

name Yahweh and Jehovah.

Pico utilized Jewish Kabbalah to prove the importance of Christ to these mystical

endeavors. Pico’s argument here consisted of placing the Hebrew letter shin in the middle of the

four letters of the Tetragrammaton to create Yeheshua or Joshua, forms of the name Jesus. This

letter is the sole consonant in the word, since the original four letters of the Tetragrammaton act

as vowel-like breath sounds. Thus, according to Christian cabalists, the added consonant “makes

audible the ineffable name” (Yates, Occult Philosophy 20). For these cabalists, the name of Jesus

was literally the Word made Flesh. According to Yates, this obscure argument would be the

justification for Christians to practice the so-called “ars combinandi,” the art of combining

Hebrew letters in order to discover hidden meanings in Scripture. Since this art confirmed for the

cabalists the truth of Christianity, utilizing cabalistic techniques for meditation and contacting

higher realms was also justified, especially those of angels and spirits. But this mystical language

would be used not just for contact, but to actually exert influence over spirits and angels, and to

protect oneself from demonic influence. Yates further tells us, employing Agrippa as an

example, that the use of cabala was a form of insurance for practitioners. This way, they could

4 For example, Lon Milo DuQuette notes an interesting paradox that the Hebrew word for Messiah (“moshiach”) has the same numerical value (358) as the word used to describe the serpent in the book of Genesis (“nahash”) ( Chicken Qabalah 187).

130 seek knowledge and power through these means and, ideally, not be subject to damnation or

persecution as heretics, since they were using God’s language, and presumably, God’s methods

(Occult Philosophy 47).

Thus, esotericists use the kabbalistic method of gematria to discover meaning in an

esoteric text by applying the method of correspondence, a way of “reading” the universe, to

actual reading. Words, phrases, names, biblical passages, are never just what they seem, never

just surface meaning. In fact, throughout studies of magical practitioners and their methods, this

philosophy behind reading and interpreting texts appears over and over again. In order to

understand the context and function of magical texts, a reader must employ unusual reading

techniques. For instance, in an exegesis of a medieval magical text entitled Forbidden Rites: A

Necromancer’s Manual of the Fifteenth Century , religion scholar Richard Kieckhefer illuminates the subject of magical miscellanies, manuscripts that were often simply notes and marginalia intended to aid the magician who presumably already knew what to do with the information at hand. Thus, to the uninitiated, these magical texts would seem incomplete, and without the requisite knowledge for their use, indecipherable (Kraig 372). 5 This was also the structure of early modern grimoires, such as the Goetia or the Lesser Key of Solomon , works consisting mostly of diagrams and notes that assume a certain amount of magical training in the reader. 6 In fact, the term grimoire, denoting a magical text, shares an etymological root with grammar,

5 Many modern magician/authors, when dealing with the medieval grimoires, like the Goetia or The Lesser Key of Solomon , usually agree that these texts assumed a certain amount of magical training that would help the magician avoid the traps intentionally laid in the text to protect the operations from being performed by the wrong hands (See John Michael Greer, Circles of Power: Ritual Magic in the Western Tradition , (St. Paul, 1997) and Donald Michael Kraig, Modern Magick: Eleven Lessons in the High Magickal Arts (St. Paul, 1988)).

131 implying the lexical nature of such texts, not to mention the occult aspects of language itself

(Covino 5). These grimoires and miscellanies stand apart from notions of the unified, authored text, often because they were unbound and unmarked, making them difficult to catalogue or even locate. Offering his fifteenth-century necromancer's manuscript as an example, Kieckhefer proposes that studies of specific manuscripts are needed to more fully understand the history of magical practice. These miscellanies concentrate on the practicalities and contingencies of actual magical practice, rather than attempting to provide a holistic, theoretical basis for practice.

The movement away from theoretical treatises and toward miscellanies, Kieckhefer argues, is a move from a totalizing single-author vision to the more complex discursive network of magic as it interpenetrates culture, society, religion and history ( Forbidden Rites 262) 7. To further illustrate the complex relation of magical practitioner and text, specifically the particular method of reading based on the philosophy of occult correspondence, and the creation and use of a magical language, let us turn our attention to scholarship on John Dee, the Elizabethan astrologer and mystic.

“A Subtle Art”: John Dee and Magical Poaching

In The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age , Frances Yates introduces John Dee, mathematician, librarian, cartographer, Queen Elizabeth’s court astrologer, politician and magician as the quintessential Renaissance man. She places Dee squarely in a continuous

6 These particular grimoires, of unknown authorship, were "translated" and recompiled for more contemporary use by Samuel Mathers, founder of the Golden Dawn in 1903 (Sutin 109).

7 In my recent discussions with scholars of esotericism and occultism, I have come across a critique of the Golden Dawn’s tendency to ignore differences in various manuscripts for primary texts like The Sacred Magic of Abramelin , homogenizing the material for easier consumption. This process is aided, they argue, by the “Llewellynization” of the Golden Dawn material, referring to the popular Minnesotan publishing house that has dominated the field in occult and witchcraft texts, specializing in flashy instructional manuals for beginners.

132 genealogy of Renaissance philosophers who utilized Christian cabalistic methods, like

Agrippa, Ficino and Pico. 8 Dee’s work is important for our purposes for two reasons. First, he encapsulates the Renaissance figure of the magician who takes an esoteric approach to knowledge and incorporates that knowledge into initiatic writing, especially his classic and obscure alchemical work, the Monas Hieroglyphica , which he created in 1564. Such an approach, located in a participatory mode of reading and writing, is an essential element to

Versluis’s notion of ahistorical continuity, in which literature and art fulfill the function of occult transmission in the absence of an unbroken initiatory tradition. Secondly, Dee’s magical practice reveals a performance-oriented pursuit of knowledge and union with divinity. Here, I focus on an infamous series of operations involving the evocation of and conversation with angels, spirits, and intelligences through a scryer, a kind of medium who would see images on the reflective surface of a mirror, stone, or crystal. Though previously brushed aside by scholars as the truly unfortunate, mad meanderings of an otherwise brilliant mind, the “Enochian” operations are certainly one of Dee’s enduring occult legacies. These angel conversations are part of a complex network of reading, re-reading, marginalia, digestion, writing, prayer and ritual. Textuality and performance are inextricably bound together within Dee’s magic. I argue that Dee’s techniques are both occult and performative in their use of text and magical ritual.

Disagreements by scholars on the importance of these operations certainly demonstrate the possibility of multiple readings of Dee as a problematic figure in both Elizabethan and occult

8 Yates was primarily responsible for emphasizing Dee and other Hermetic figures like Giordano Bruno in early modern studies, such that most scholars dealing with these topics have had to take great pains to distance themselves from Yates’ thesis that Hermeticism was the driving force behind the Scientific Revolution. Christopher Lehrich outlines how support of Yates’ work initially engendered skepticism in the broader scholarly community, but more recently scholars have been able to acknowledge her important contributions to the field of Western esotericism (Lehrich, “Discipline” 2).

133 history. First, however, we must understand a bit about Dee's method as a scholar. For

instance, William Sherman, in John Dee: The Politics of Reading and Writing in the English

Renaissance , disagrees with Yates' characterization of Dee as solely a magician, which he feels

“essentializes Dee by isolating him from his social and spatial circumstances – or at least by failing to treat them in all their contingency and complexity” (19). Here, Sherman argues that

Yates, while acknowledging Dee’s non-magical activities, creates a totalizing myth that decontextualizes Dee and removes him from the intricate network of academic, commercial, and courtly circles that he navigated. One method Sherman uses to recontextualize Dee is to spatialize his practices in terms of the physical location of Dee’s library at Mortlake. He maps out the library within easy access of frequently traveled roads to and from London, notes his frequent visitors and its status as a “busy annex of the court” (40), even hypothesizing who one might encounter along the way. This spatial method breaks down hard and fast boundaries between the active and contemplative life that Dee simultaneously led. Thus, according to

Sherman, Dee is not an isolated figure in his research and practice but a figure that deserves to be viewed discursively. Sherman further uses spatial methods in demonstrating the relationship between Dee and his library, suggesting connections between Dee’s method of spatial organization and his practice of digesting texts. Not only did Dee’s library and, indeed, the bulk of his own writings, remain in an unbound, unmarked manuscript form, but the works did not seem to be organized in any particular categorical fashion at all. A visitor to Dee’s library (and there were many) was entirely at the mercy of the librarian, who must have depended solely on memory and mnemonic mapping in order to find anything. 9 Sherman implies here that the value

9 Frances Yates devotes an entire book to this so-called ars memoria: The Art of Memory (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966).

134 of Dee’s collection was inseparable from the presence of Dee himself as the sole possessor of the key to secret wisdom (32). Thus, Dee’s status as a magician and keeper of knowledge is not simply because of his texts. Rather, Dee’s magical power is embodied in the physical space of his library, and further, in his memory and actual body. Access to his person is absolutely required to gain access to the knowledge within his library.

In addition, Sherman implies that reading, in the case of Dee, is both a magical and political act. In his work, Sherman draws upon reader-response theory, deconstruction, and socio-linguistics, especially Austin and Searle, in order to formulate his approach to reading and writing: “[Reading] must be studied as an activity in particular contexts; as a process not only of reception but of appropriation, and an act of mediation between textual information and readers with specific skills, interests, and needs. Theories of reading are important, but they must give way to, and be grounded in, histories of the reading practices of actual readers” (59). Similarly,

Nicholas Clulee presents Dee as constantly engaged in a dialogic process between his books and his contemporaries: “[H]ow he read his sources and selectively absorbed and transformed them often depended on his previous thinking as well as the immediate issues with which he was concerned, his social ambitions, and the reinforcement of other readings” (16). The most valuable result of these authors’ work for our purposes, then, is the way in which they investigate

Dee as a reader who compiled, collected, managed, organized, and utilized vast amounts of information, not only through his library, but through his own governmental, scholarly, and commercial work. In essence, Dee exists as a performing presence, within conversations, both textual and oral, mediating between reading and writing, contemplation and social interaction, praying and evoking.

135 In addition, Sherman’s work illuminates Dee’s intentional strategy of reading and producing texts, significantly pointing out that for Dee reading was not a passive act of receiving information, but the active processing of books in order to use them. The size of his library, coupled with the fact that most of the books had markings and notes by Dee demonstrates his daily work to synthesize such vast amounts of material. The work involved, according to

Sherman, “is not so much a question of cracking the code of a text as determining its relevance and applicability in contexts often very different from that in which it was produced” (61). Yet, interpreting Dee’s notes has become a task not unlike cracking a code. Sherman himself admits ignorance when he attempts to make sense of notes that do not seem to correspond to the text, particularly with Dee’s tendency to draw human faces in alchemical texts (88). He goes on to present Dee as struggling for agency amongst his material, signing his own notes: “Dee wanted his notes to be recognized, to become part of the author’s text, and to be one stage in the accretion of readers’ responses – in other words, to actively participate in the creation of a new, and ever-changing, text” (89). Sherman concludes that Dee’s particular use of marginalia is also part of a Renaissance scholarly and pedagogical tradition of adaptation and accretion, while significantly connecting these notions to poststructuralist theories on authorship (122). Dee’s use of manuscripts further complicates issues of authorship. These unbound works, along with the handwritten marginalia, form a discourse that is, at its essence, a more fluid set of knowledges with permeable borders, conversations easily corrected, improved upon, digested. Sherman also suggests that this type of work has been previously ignored based on a modernist anti-manuscript bias, involving the assumption of a unidirectional relationship between script and print, in which printed work is more valued because of its solidity and permanence (116).

136 Seen in this light, Dee’s marginalia can be viewed as an example of Michel de

Certeau’s notion of “poaching”: “a subtle art of ‘renters’ who know how to insinuate their

countless differences into the dominant text” ( Practice xxii). Here, de Certeau acknowledges that he is giving currency to a medieval concept that nonetheless challenges contemporary cultural notions that rigidly and hierarchically define writing in terms of producing a text, while reading “is to receive it from someone else without putting one’s own mark on it, without remaking it.” Rather, the poaching reader “invents in texts something different from what they

‘intended.’ He detaches them from their (lost or accessory) origin. He combines their fragments and creates something un-known [ sic ] in the space organized by their capacity for allowing an indefinite plurality of meanings” ( Practice 169). Magicians like Dee, who work with miscellanies, marginalia, and incomplete grimoires, must always be aware of the potential interpretations of the fragmented texts they use, working with a certain adaptability in order to achieve the desired result in their magical or alchemical operations. The magician, then, is the ultimate poacher, in de Certeau’s sense of the word, who takes bits and pieces for what he needs and leaves the rest. This applies to the acts of reading, interpreting, and digesting of texts as well as to more practical applications of magick, which we will explore further in later chapters.

Dee’s reading of his predecessors, particularly Paracelsus, Trithemius, Agrippa and

Johannes Reuchlin, who followed Pico’s teachings on cabala and language, directly influenced his own entry into the initiatic tradition of alchemy, the Monas Hieroglyphica . Trithemius and

Reuchlin specifically make reference to links between the Emerald Tablet, Pythagorean theory, and cabala in the context of alchemy and Dee followed this lineage by creating his own

137 alchemical symbol, the Monad intended to express the mystical unity of all Creation. 10

Christopher Lehrich refers to the Monad as “a super-sign that refers to everything at once in every sphere.” He further argues that Dee’s attempts to understand the symbol he himself had created were driven by his view of it as a thing that had always already been written, and that

Dee’s approach could be seen as a kind of ritualization ( The Occult Mind 54). In other words, through a kind of meditation on the symbol, the practitioner could contemplate the unity that the symbol implies. Dee also believed the act of interpreting the Monad offered the possibility of a further symbolic language that could explain the relationship between God’s plan for creation, the practical elements of alchemy and the mystical transformation of the human soul. Within this notoriously obscure treatise consisting of twenty-four theorems, Dee applies the cabalistic technique of letter permutation and numerical calculation to Latin and Greek, languages already used in mathematics. As Peter J. Forshaw points out, Dee recognized and utilized the analogy between kabbalah, in which the Hebrew language in the Torah is broken down and recombined to generate new meanings, and alchemy, “in which substances were reduced to their primal matter, and then recombined and transmuted to create and reveal new products” (252). Forshaw further demonstrates how Dee’s symbol continually appeared in subsequent cabalistic and

Pythagorean works, including those of the noted alchemist Heinrich Khunrath, even when they

10 Part of Dee’s extrapolation of the symbol involves breaking it down to various shapes that corresponds to planetary forces and elements. Several of these shapes are further explained through mathematical formulas.

138 do not credit Dee directly. 11 Forty years later, a version of the Monas was also included in the series of pamphlets containing the Rosicrucian Manifestos. 12

Therefore, Dee’s work occupies a crucial position in the initiatory chain of Western esotericism, in that it incorporates ideas and methods from significant esoteric traditions

(Hermeticism, Kabbalah, alchemy) and that elements of the text and the text itself are further incorporated into subsequent works on these topics. Dee ends his treatise with the phrase

“Vulgaris, Hic, Oculus caligabit, diffidetque plurimum.” A 1947 translation renders it as “Here the vulgar eye will see nothing but Obscurity and will despair considerably.” 13 Dee realizes the relative impenetrability of his text for the “vulgar” masses, addressing the typical occult audience: the elite few who are initiates of esoteric, alchemical traditions. As we will see, occult texts throughout the history of Western esotericism tend to address their audiences this way. On this subject, Versluis argues that “an expressed or implied intent on the part of an esoteric work’s creator . . . forms a kind of ritual initiatory boundary. This work is circumscribed; it is for the few; and those who enter into it do so in order to undergo the process that it embodies.” The intended readers of an esoteric work are those initiates “who see the work as a mirroring a process that they seek to undergo in themselves.” These readers engage in an active and

11 Forshaw notes that the first appearance of Dee’s glyph is in the work of Gerald Dorn, the translator of Paracelsus into German. Dorn’s Chymisticum Artificium Naturae , published in 1568, four years after Dee’s Monas, includes the unaccredited glyph on its title page. In a further instance of intertextual marginalia, Dee’s own copy of Dorn’s work has a handwritten note in Latin that complains about Dorn’s use of the glyph “without so much as a by your leave or any acknowledgement” (257).

12 In fact, the Confessio , the second Rosicrucian Manifesto, was published with a text entitled A Brief Consideration of the More Secret Philosophy by Philip a Gabella, almost a word for word reproduction of John Dee’s Monas Hieroglyphica .

13 Dr. John Dee, Monas Hieroglyphica , trans. J.W. Hamilton-Jones, 1947, Twilit Grotto: Archives of Western Esoterica , ed. Joseph H. Peterson, 1 Dec. 1999, 23 Oct. 2006 .

139 imaginative participation in which imagination “refers to the sympathetic capacity of the

reader or audience to participate in a work and to be transmuted by it, an initiatory process that

takes places through words and image, or through what we may also call the induced vision of

art” ( Restoring Paradise 13-14). The term “art” is significant here, as Versluis explains that the images and illustrations in alchemical and Rosicrucian texts play a hieratic role for the reader, since the text “is not merely an abstract discussion about some topic, it actually reveals ( hiera -)

the nature of its subject” ( Restoring Paradise 142). These images aid the gnostic shift in

consciousness that the writer intends for his audience.

Thus, the initiatory nature of Dee’s text is based on several elements: 1) a specific

address to the elite few who will benefit from his work; 2) the use of hieroglyphic imagery to aid

in the shift of consciousness necessary to understanding the work; 3) its position in an initiatory

chain of past masters and traditions, as well as later alchemical works; and 4) its ultimate goal to

restore humanity to a more direct relationship with the divine through language and symbol. This

is both an occult and performative approach to text. Here, the term ‘text’ recalls Roland Barthes’

notion of the writerly text, in which the reader is “no longer a consumer but a producer of the

text” ( S/Z 4). At first glance, one might assume that Barthes’ dichotomy between ‘work’ and

‘text’ would reveal the former as the more occult concept, since work implies a product, a

signified that hides a “secret, ultimate, something to be sought out” (“From Work to Text” 158).

However, as W.B. Worthen has demonstrated, Barthes’ notion of the text is undoubtedly

performative, since it implies a signifying field of play: “What Barthes means by text is in some

sense more like what we mean by performance: a production of a specific state of the text in

which a variety of intertextual possibilities are realized” (14). Barthes’ notion of text involves

“the activity of associations, contiguities, carryings-over,” the sort of method inherent to the

140 magician’s metonymic approaches to knowledge, particularly through the use of correspondences (“From work to text”158). Ultimately, the unified work (“where interpretation is earnest, concerned with fidelity and obedience”) is for the non-initiate, while the slippage and interplay (the jouissance) of the ‘text’ as performance (“insouciant, rewriting and disseminating”) is how occultists approach writing (Worthen 12). Dee’s methods of both processing and creating texts, then, are specifically about realizing intertextual possibilities and putting them into practice.

Dee’s notorious angelic operations are also fundamental examples of this performative and occult textual process. The Enochian workings were an extensive project that occurred in an intermittent period between 1581 and 1586 and again in 1607. The main point of these seemed to be to gather secret knowledge about humanity and the natural world by communicating with angelic beings. To this end, Dee would establish a framework through prayer and ritual while the seer, usually one Edward Kelly, would interpret visions and voices with the help of a

“showstone,” a polished, translucent stone generally used for mediumistic purposes. Dee would then record whatever information the seer would dictate, subsequently formulating questions and instructions for the beings (Harkness, Conversations 17). These workings were certainly consonant with Dee’s search for the “cabala of nature,” a more pure form of the cabala of language. Using this cabala of nature, an “unwritten Kabbalah” of sorts, Dee was convinced that the manipulation of texts was the key to understanding these secrets. 14 Indeed, Dee’s diaries of the angelic operations contained specific references to Agrippa, Bacon, Lull, Reuchlin, Postel,

Trithemius, Peter Albano, other forms of Hermetica, Neoplatonism, and Kabbalah (Harkness,

14 The “unwritten Kabbalah” is a mysterious category of Kabbalistic study, based on oral tradition involving the correspondence between symbols and nature, according to Kraig (63).

141 Conversations 27). Even in the small section Sherman devotes to the angelic operations, he

suggests a connection between the operations and Dee’s other dialogic practices: “Not only are

the pages of the angelic conversations filled with references to and images of books, but their

very forms (the rituals they enacted and the languages they employed) followed textual

conventions, and were informed by Kelly’s masterful manipulations of Dee’s textual

expectations” (80).

The problematic nature of the operations’ extreme intertextuality is humorously

demonstrated in an oft-cited scene in which Kelly, something of a rapscallion and a charlatan by

reputation, triumphantly emerges from Dee’s library, accusing the angels of plagiarizing

Agrippa. Though Dee simply sees this as evidence of Agrippa’s correctness, some scholars read

the incident as evidence of fraud on the part of Kelly, who must have been aware of Dee’s work

and had access to his library (Butler 251). The angelic operations often seemed to be dialogues

of moral and religious conflict between Dee and Kelly, who was certainly of a lower educational

and social class than Dee. Further evidence of a sort of strange tri-alogue between Dee, Kelly

and the angels occurs when Kelly, who had no prior knowledge of Greek, is speaking for the angels in that language, then stops, protesting: “Unless you speak in some language I can understand, I will express no more of this Ghybberish.” To complicate matters further, the Greek translates into a warning to Dee not to trust Kelly (James xxiij). Thus, the relation between Dee and Kelly always seemed to be changing in relation to these tensions. While Dee was convinced that his work was entirely consistent with orthodox Christianity, preferring prayer to lengthy ritual invocation, the knowledge that the angels imparted often was magical, by the mere fact that it was manipulating a secret language to affect nature.

142 The complex dialogic relationship inherent in the operations is also apparent within

the texts of the diaries themselves. One can easily read the diaries as performance script, since

they are written in dialogue form, with Dee, Kelly and the angels as the main characters. Like the

marginal discourse of necromancy barely penetrating the boundaries of Dee’s institutional

discourse, itself marginal, Kelly and his personality seem to dart around the text. For instance, in

a typical passage from the diaries, Kelly’s initials would appear above the line, placing him, in

the context of this undoubtedly visual text, within and beyond the discourse. Like Dee’s other works, the angel diaries are filled with marginalia, notes, scribbles, different font types, and of course, pictorial symbols like the delta Dee uses to indicate himself. The text is also haunted by the presence of the spirits, sometimes in sketch form. Further, the diaries are divided into two main types of text. First we have the actual angel diaries themselves, which recount the everyday, mundane doings of the household. This would include human guests as well as spiritual, including whatever conversations and operations occurred. Secondly, Dee produced so- called “revealed books,” finely written in polished handwriting, which were often dictations of divine knowledge.

Again, it is important to remember that Dee’s use of this strange angelic language stems from the larger occult project to reconstruct an originary language through which the magus could read the cabala of nature, and communicate more directly with the angels, and thus, with

God. According to the angels that speak through Kelly, every word in this language embodies a larger essence containing the seed of all possible human knowledge: medicine, mechanics, transportation, divination, alchemy, teleology, and various other components of Renaissance thought, not the least of which being natural philosophy. The discovery and use of this language, then, would be entirely appropriate to Dee’s relentless pursuit of knowledge evidenced by his

143 vast library. And because any mistake made by Dee in bringing this knowledge forth would

take on cosmic significance, the translation and transcription of Enochian had to be vitally exact

(Harkness, Conversations 167-8). It is this process of transcription and translation that places

John Dee squarely in the center of occultist tradition. Dee’s angelic activity, according to Clulee,

was a continuation of the project Dee lays out in his Monas Hieroglyphica . For Dee, this

language would be “not merely a parallel revelation to supplement scripture but a self-sufficient

and adequate alternative to biblical theology with the advantage of greater certainty than

scripture which was prone to varieties of human interpretation” (217). This angelic language,

transcends writing and works towards restoring Eden (Harkness, Conversations 167).

The actual process of transcribing this language involves some of the most intriguing

passages of Dee’s diaries. Because of the amazing potency of the language, it could not be

dictated directly. As would be expected, the secrets of the language are revealed only through

the proper combination of letters. The Enochian language itself is presented as a table, a

necessarily cryptographic mediation. The method the angels first use is to point to each letter on

the table with a rod, all this within the relatively small showstone, while Dee would

painstakingly copy down one letter at a time as dictated by Kelly. Entire elaborate prayers would

be dictated in this way, making the whole process extremely time consuming. Eventually, Dee

was permitted to record the prayers phonetically, but even this was interminable, since Dee had

to translate these into Hebrew, then English. In addition, many of the prayers were so powerful

that they were dictated backwards so they would not actually be spoken. As a result, Dee

complains that surely it would not be in God’s interest for it to take so long. In one of the scenes

in which their personalities become apparent, the angels, at first sympathetic, eventually lose

patience and, clearly upset at Dee’s presumption, admonish him that he is to learn these secrets

144 on God’s terms, not his own. In keeping with the early modern tradition of the emblem book, instructional manuals that used detailed symbolic pictures, the angels would change colors and forms in the showstone, creating a sort of alchemical narrative with movement and action.

When a particular lesson was over, the angels signified this by the lowering of a black curtain as if on a stage (Harkness, Conversations 205). This was truly microcosmic theatre. Therefore, the angels, with the help of Dee and Kelly, seemed intent on creating both originary language and originary performance. 15

Dee’s angelic operations stand as an example of occult intertextuality, a dialogic project that utilized performance modes, previous texts on occultism, otherworldly instruction, and magical tools to create a specific language. This language itself acts as a complex, layered code for the practitioner to decipher and play with, a hint to the hidden mysteries of the occult universe. Unlike Dee’s Monas Hieroglyphica , the Enochian operations were not intended for publishing. Many of the diaries were lost and the rest were found some years after his death and published by a certain Meric Casaubon under the somewhat ponderous title A True and Faithful

Relation of what passed for many Yeers between Dr. John Dee. . .and Some Spirits (1659).

Casaubon’s intention was certainly to discredit Dee and his reputation. Yet, he unintentionally assured both historians and magicians of later centuries would study Dee’s work. The Enochian operations were further popularized in the early twentieth century by Aleister Crowley, who

15 In an additional essay, Harkness has further developed the notion that Dee’s texts are performative, and indeed, theatrical. In “Shows in the Showstone,” Harkness’ main thesis is that “striking parallels” exist between the mise-en-scene (such as images, special effects, costume and setting) of the angel conversations and the conventions of Elizabethan theatre. Indeed, she argues that close analysis of the texts can be aided by a knowledge of dramaturgy. Because of his experience as a special effects creator in the Elizabethan theatre, Dee certainly would have been familiar with the stage conventions and settings typical of the Elizabethan theatre: roads, meadows, forests, mountains, streets, market-places, gateways, bridges, and great halls. There were no cosmic or mystical settings in Kelly’s showstone (Harkness, Shows ).

145 claimed to be a reincarnation of Edward Kelley (Sutin 200). Crowley used a series of

Enochian conjurations, called Keys or Calls, based on the complex table diagrams that Kelley scried and Dee transcribed. Variations on this Enochian system of magick are still used today by various groups that work in ceremonial magick, including the Hermetic Order of Chicago, of which I was a member. 16 Yet, Enochian language is merely the product of the elaborate ritual, textual and performative process that Dee and Kelley underwent in their quest for esoteric knowledge, just as it is the building block for further magickal work performed by magicians afterwards. The work of John Dee, the quintessential magician, suggests that the occult process is not merely about discovering secrets, but about constructing new forms, based on recombination, text making, and ritual invocation. This is, indeed, the construction of an occult text, in Barthes’ sense of the term, which is performative and intertextual. In order to break down this process even further, we must look more closely at occult theories of language and action, particularly represented by Kabbalah. This is surely a poststructural landscape where “In the

Beginning is the Word” and all Creation is text. Yet, the act of producing texts and incorporating text into practice holds a particular tension with speaking and performance. Next we shall explore this nexus of kabbalistic thought and poststructuralist theories of language.

“To Read What Was Never Written”

As we have noted, one of the major influences on Renaissance magicians like John Dee was Kabbalah, a set of exegetical texts that were themselves endlessly commented upon by

16 The Hermetic Order would often use Enochian names when invoking angelic forces in their standard space consecration, while some of the more elaborate Enochian “calls” were essential to initiations and other higher operations, such as a series of rituals known as the “elemental pacts,” in which initiates would attempt to engage in intense communion with each of the four elements.

146 Hebrew scholars, resulting in various techniques for reading and writing texts, as well as

providing source material for meditation and ritual. Though an explication of the vast history of

Kabbalistic exegesis is beyond the scope of this dissertation, a few essential points are in order.

First, it is important to mention, as von Stuckrad has asserted, that Kabbalah is a “nodal point in

European history of religion” where Jewish, Muslim and Christian strains of esotericism come

together and create a syncretic practice (31). Secondly, Kabbalah is extremely significant to

magical practitioners and philosophers. Not only were esoteric philosophers like Ficino, Pico

della Mirandola, Agrippa and Dee heavily influenced by Kabbalistic teachings, theories and

methods, but Kabbalah continued to play a role in the development of Western occultism, from

Rosicrucianism to Freemasonry and later, the Golden Dawn and Thelema, Aleister Crowley’s

particular brand of ceremonial magick. Contemporary practitioners of ceremonial magick

heavily emphasize their interpretation of Kabbalah, mostly focusing on the Tree of Life glyph

and its various correspondences, and quite a number of books are on the market that instruct in

forms of “qabbalistic magic.” 17 These concepts even appear in basic manuals on Wicca. Finally,

Kabbalah plays a somewhat uneasy role in more contemporary poststructuralist understandings

of text. In this section, we will especially focus on how some poststructural theories enter into

kabbalistic territory through their explorations of writing. Recent scholars have begun to more

seriously consider the importance of Kabbalah particularly to the work of Jacques Derrida, which

we will briefly explore.

17 This brand of Kabbalah is not to be confused with the version espoused by the popular Kabbalah Centre in New York City and Los Angeles, and followed by celebrities like Madonna, Demi Moore and Roseanne Barr. The Kabbalah Centre focuses more on New Age-inspired “philosophies of living” rather than on magickal practices or Hebrew exegesis as such.

147 Scholars tend to agree that Kabbalah has its roots in Hekhalot Mysticism, a literary

genre exploring prophetic visions of God and the angels, especially those attributed to Ezekiel,

during the rabbinical period of Jewish history (roughly 70-500 C.E.). Some of these explorations

involved the mystic’s ascension to higher planes of existence, reaching dangerously close to the

heavenly spheres. Much of this mysticism had strong similarities to other contemporaneous

esoteric movements, like Neoplatonism and Gnosticism (von Stuckrad 33-34). Towards the end

of the Talmudic era, around the seventh century C.E.., Jewish mystical traditions were

systematized in one of the first important Kabbalistic texts, the Sefer Yetzirah , the Book of

Formation. This work is a primary example of the occult text that can be used as foundational building blocks for magical ritual. The book’s occult quality is first established by its unclear origin. The inability to mark precise origins, a defining factor for the occult text, allows for easy reification. Although its exact date of composition has been disputed, legend claims the Hebrew patriarch, Abraham, transcribed the text 4000 years ago. The Sefer Yetzirah , a remarkably small book of a few hundred words, contains the secrets of the universe encoded within the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet, in a direct application of what might be called a Kabbalistic semiotics. According to legend, some magic-using Kabbalists have used the code for more practical applications, like making golems. 18

However, one of the main applications that the book proposes is contemplation of the holy names of God used in Scripture. Any possible letter combinations are always predicated

18 The legend of the golem, a model for later stories like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein , involved molding a soulless creature out of mud, usually to perform a particular task, like protection or vengeance. The golem is animated by the application of a Hebrew name of God on its person. In the stories, once the golem’s task is complete, he must be destroyed by erasing letters on his forehead, or else he will continue to wreak havoc. See especially Moshe Idel, Golem: Jewish Magical and Mystical Traditions on the Artificial Arthropoid , (New York: SUNY Press, 1990). This text includes translations of medieval commentaries on the Sefer Yetzirah, especially by Rabbi Eleazar of Worms.

148 upon these holy names, the most important being the Tetragrammaton: YHVH, ( Yod-He-

Vav-Heh ). This acronym provides the basis for mystical contemplation and prayer, and is the foundation for the system proposed by Abraham Abulafia in the thirteenth century. Referred to as “ecstatic Kabbalah,” Abulafia’s work focused on the recombination of letters through linguistic coding, like gematria, notarikon (the creation of acronyms) and temurah (substitution of one letter for another). In addition, Abulafia advocated concentrating on the aural aspects of the language, in order for the mystic to achieve higher mystical states through what is known as vibratory prayer. In other words, the kabbalist intones the syllables of the name in such a way that his physical body actually resonates with the sound. To aid in the visualization, practitioners are even encouraged to imagine the actual Hebrew letters as physically enflamed. In a version of the Hermetic principle of microcosm and macrocosm, kabbalists believed this method would link the physical body to the spiritual realm in a direct and embodied way. This practice of

“vibrating” Hebrew names of God continues today in contemporary ceremonial magick rituals, such as the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentragram 19 and the Middle Pillar (Kraig 44). 20

19 The Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram, or LBRP as it is known among practitioners, is the simplest form of a series of invoking and banishing rituals, the five pointed star supposedly representative of the four elements, crowned by spirit. These exercises involve the tracing of pentagrams in the air in different directions depending on the quarter, and charging them with a vibration of the appropriate god name (like Adonai, for instance). The LBRP is one of the first ritual exercises a candidate would learn in training to be a neophyte. Major rituals may use this practice as a first step in the proceedings, while the individual practitioner is encouraged to perform this rite as part of daily practice and meditation. Ronald Hutton explains that the five pointed star, even though it appeared in magical literature from the ancient world, was used more increasingly by Renaissance magicians, and was included in invoking and banishing rituals by 19 th century French magus Eliphas Levi, and eventually by Samuel Mathers, who wrote most of the Golden Dawn’s main rituals (78). See also Luhrmann 224.

20 In the Middle Pillar, the practitioner chants or “vibrates” certain Hebrew names of God, focusing the vibrations in particular parts of the body that correspond to the Tree of Life glyph. A simplified version of this is the Qabalistic cross, in which the magician vibrates the phrase “Ateh Malkuth ve-Geburah ve-Gedulah le-olam amen” (which translates to the prayer “Thine is the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory, for ever and ever, amen) while touching the head, the chest, left shoulder and right shoulder, then clasping the hands in the middle of the chest as if praying. This simple exercise is said to both ground the individual to the natural world (Malkuth) while linking that individual to divinity (Ateh), thus actualizing the Hermetic principle, “As above, so below.” Though the exercise is common in ceremonial magick, a detailed description can be found in Kraig (35).

149 While the Sefer Yetzirah introduced the various names of God into practice, a further text assigned these names to ten emanations (or sefirot) on the Tree of Life. The Sefer ha-Bahîr , or “Bright and Shining Book,” was published around 1180 and further advanced the notion of divine manifestation that was accessible to the kabbalist (von Stuckrad 36). A subsequent development was the publication of a series of texts known as the Zohar (meaning “Splendor” in

Hebrew) in the 13 th century. Like the Sefer Yetzirah , the Zohar’s origins are mixed with legend.

Moses de Leon published the books but claimed that they were actually written by a second century rabbi, Simeon bar Yohai. To add to the story, de Leon wrote the texts in Aramaic, an eccentric language spoken at the time of Christ, which made the Zohar especially confusing and impenetrable to medieval scholars, as well as later scholars. 21 On this point, von Stuckrad argues that “[t]hese methods were not representative of ‘forgery,’ but were a firmly established stylistic element of religious literature, intended to enhance the legitimacy, gravity and authority of the text” (38). Here, the Zohar functions as the quintessential occult text, where origins are never fixed and are always in play.

In turn, the Zohar inspired numerous commentaries. The best known of these was by

Rabbi Isaac Luria (1534-1572). Luria’s approach, known as “theosophical kabbalah” outlined a kabbalistic interpretation of the Creation, humanity’s separation from the divine and the possibility for salvation. Like Socrates, Luria never wrote anything down – accounts of his teachings were recorded by various disciples and successors, most notably Rabbi Hayyim Vital

(1542-1620), very little of which is available in English. 22 However, Lurianic Kabbalah

21 Only as recently as 2003, Hebrew scholar Daniel Matt produced the first translation from Aramaic to English of the Zohar into three volumes with commentaries. See The Zohar: Pritzker Edition , trans. Daniel Matt (Berkeley, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003).

150 introduced several important concepts. One of these is tzimtzum , an intriguing twist on the

Word made flesh. Luria’s God ( Ein-sof , literally meaning infinite) creates the universe not by

revelation or emanation, but by concealment and contraction: “How did he produce and create

the world? Like a man who gathers in and contracts his breath, so that the smaller may contain

the larger, so he contracted His light into a hand’s breadth, and the world was left in darkness,

and in that darkness He cut boulders and hewed rocks” (Scholem 129). In this cosmogony,

divine Being is initially undifferentiated and Everywhere. Therefore, the infinite must somehow

make space for the finite. This space is created through contraction, concealment, and silence.

Luria also tells of the Shevirat ha-Kelim (the Breaking of the Vessels), in which God’s light is

poured into spherical emanations which cannot contain it. These vessels shatter and thus

language is rendered incomprehensible, opposites are created, specifically the binary oppositions

of masculine and feminine, and humanity is distanced from God. Yet, Luria also outlines hope

for redemption through tikkun (literally meaning restoration or repair) in which individuals have

the opportunity to raise their souls by prayer and devotion to the Torah . Significantly, Luria couches all this in historical terms, pointing to the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and the expulsion from Spain in 1492 as “actual representations of the salvific process of exile and the restoration of cosmic order” (von Stuckrad 41).

Hence, through both its theosophical and ecstatic strains, Kabbalah provides an entry into

mysticism primarily through language, creating a presence through the vibration and

visualization of holy names and through the contemplation of wordplay, as in gematria. At the

same time, Lurianic Kabbalah establishes an absence through tzimtzum , a sort of divine, active

22 See especially Isaac Luria and His Kabbalistic Fellowship , Lawrence Fine (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003).

151 not-speaking that leads to creation, and tikkun , in which both individuals and history strive

for an always delayed redemption in an attempt to heal an impossible rift between humanity and

divinity, between subject and object, and between signifier and signified. Here, we have in

essence the major factors of occultism, caught up in text and performance. First we have the

presence of writing and text (including universe and nature as text) as the source of magical

formulae as well as the medium for divining the secrets of the universe. Secondly, we have the

performance of vibration as a form of chanting magical spells, the ritualized speaking of sounds

that have magical effects. We have the creation of a space for silence, a not-speaking that models

the silence that secrecy engenders, a theme we will see developed when we discuss initiation.

Finally, we have a redemptive take on history that interprets historical events in a narrative that

attempts to unify the quest for the divine even as it acknowledges the impossibility of doing so,

emphasizing the playfulness of constructing such a narrative.

It is no surprise that these concepts have continually fascinated those interested in

discourses of language and history. Kabbalah had a history of being soundly rejected and reviled

by the Jewish scholarly community, beginning with Spinoza in the seventeenth century and

continuing into the Enlightenment and far beyond. More recently scholars have attempted to

divine traces of Kabbalah in the works of Hegel, who briefly addresses Kabbalah and Gnosticism

in his 1830 Lectures on the History of Philosophy and Religion .23 However, it was Gershom

Scholem who was responsible for bringing Kabbalah into the modern scholarly consciousness in

23 See Glenn Alexander Magee, Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition (Ithica, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001). Particularly, Sanford Drob addresses kabbalistic elements in Hegel’s work, drawing an analogy between Hegel’s ‘Absolute’ and the kabalistic Ein-Sof which, according to Hegel, becomes self-alienated in a process similar to Luria’s zimzum . See Drob, Kabbalistic Metaphors: Mystical Themes in Ancient and Modern Thought (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aaronson, 2000).

152 the early 1940’s with his works, which encompassed a historiographical approach to Jewish

mysticism and promoted the Hebrew language as a foundation for sacred knowledge. Harold

Bloom similarly argued for a revisionist literary criticism based on Lurianic Kabbalah in

Kabbalah and Criticism (1975). Likewise, Walter Benjamin invoked kabbalah to elucidate his theories on writing. Borrowing the kabbalistic concept of Creation as text, he describes the

reading of Nature in his essay “On the Mimetic Faculty”:

“To read what was never written.” Such reading is the most ancient: reading before all

languages, from the entrails, the stars or dances. Later the mediating link of a new kind of

reading, of runes and hieroglyphs, came into use. It seems fair to suppose that these were

the stages by which the mimetic gift, which was the foundation of occult practices,

gained admittance to writing and language. ( Reflections 335) 24

Indeed, divination holds a crucial place among the “readings” that occur within the occult arts and sciences. It is this reading “what was never written” that forms the basis for a type of occult exegesis. Even Benjamin believed that “to some degree all great texts contain their potential translation between the lines” and that this was especially true of Scripture ( Illuminations 82).

In fact, it is through literary criticism that Benjamin saw the highest calling for the reader looking to communicate with God. Biographer Richard Wolin notes that “there seems to be definite parallels between [Benjamin’s] conception of literary works of art as hieroglyphs of redeemed life and the Kabbalistic idea of a state of redemption whose nature can be intuited through a linguistic analysis of sacred texts” (39). Further, Wolin connects Abulafia’s art of

24 Richard Wolin, in Walter Benjamin: An Aesthetics of Redemption (30), notes Benjamin’s comment that only someone familiar with Kabbalah would be able to understand some of his work. Furthermore, this comment was directed towards the foremost historical scholar on the Kabbalah, Gershom Scholem, who was a close friend and correspondent of Benjamin’s.

153 gematria with Benjamin’s philosophy of language, in which “language is not simply a

utilitarian means of communicating something, but is of an inherently divine nature and as such

represents the most direct link that mankind can have with God” (40). Yet, human language is

receptive and cognitive, as opposed to divine language, which is creative. For Benjamin, man

was not created from the word, but was rather invested with the power of language, so that he

could share in the act of creation. And through the manipulation of language, man can rekindle

and maintain that relationship with God.

Most significantly, traces of Lurianic Kabbalah are to be found in the work of Jacques

Derrida, especially the idea of tzimtzum , which Derrida mentions in the final essay of

Dissemination (1981). Indeed, in that essay and elsewhere, Derrida calls on kabbalistic theory to help present his notion of the polysemous text, as well as the concealing and revealing dynamic of language. In fact, Derrida’s fascination with undecidability in language is perfectly reflected in the Kabbalistic approach to Hebrew, particularly in scripture, where translation is always an uncertainty. 25 However, to claim Derrida as a kabbalist is extremely problematic and even his

own Jewish heritage played a questionable role in his writing. Elliot R. Wolfson maintains that

Derrida “has neither offered a sustained analysis of Jewish mysticism in any of his writings nor

has he intimated that a grasp of this material is critical for an understanding of his philosophic

orientation” (478). Furthermore, Derrida often denied that his work had metaphysical aspects,

diverging from Kabbalah quite distinctly in several areas, especially where he questions the

25 For instance, the first phrase of Genesis, and thus the Torah , is Br’Sh(Y)T. Because Hebrew technically has no proper vowels, a translator would have to supply them. Usually the phrase becomes Barashit , translated as “in the beginning.” But alternate versions construct it as Barashat , “in the head” or “with reason.” The full Biblical quote would then be “With reason did Elohim create heaven and earth.” Von Stuckrad further explains that the Aramaic word for reason is hohkmah , which is also the name of the second sephiroht on the Tree of Life. This would add a further veil of mystery for the Kabbalist to penetrate (32).

154 existence of anything (especially divine) beyond language. Yet, as Wolfson also argues,

consideration of the points of convergence and divergence between Derrida’s ideas and

Kabbalistic thought is worthwhile.

Derrida, his style intentionally playful and ambivalent, never finally settling on a stance

for or against occultism, experiments with the dialectic between language and silence, revelation

and concealment. Indeed, the essay “Dissemination” reads like a fragmented esoteric text, a

magical grimoire, not unlike The Lesser Key of Solomon with its incomplete instructions and

assumptions of independent magical training. Thus conjuring a text as occult as its subject,

Phillippe Sollers’ Numbers , Derrida claims the creation of a disseminated text, like Numbers ,

“mimes a sort of cosmogonic mythology. It is a repetition of the absolute present of the undifferentiated origin . . . ” (344). He associates this origin with the dot, the monadic zero-point of Kabbalistic mythology, the Ain Soph Aur ( Ein-Soph ). For kabbalists, the Ain Soph Aur,

sometimes translated as limitless light, is the point of origin for all knowledge and existence. 26

Of course, we are separated from this origin by a series of veils, which prevent humankind from

ever experiencing the light directly, just as we cannot see the true face of God and live. 27

Derrida continues with explorations of Luria’s concept of tzimtzum , a metaphysical space

created by the contraction of the godhead. Scholars like Wolfson and Sanford Drob argue that

Derrida found intriguing theoretical similarities between tzimtzum and his notion of différance ,

“the dissemination of the word through the infinite play of signification occasioned by the

26 Byron Sherwin makes an analogy between the Ein Sof , the unknowable presence of God, and the medieval Christian concept of Deus absconditus , the hidden God (as opposed to the Deus revelatus , the revealed God, which Sherwin associates with the sefirot of the Tree of Life) (56). Here, we have a further Kabbalistic version of the dynamic of concealment and revelation.

27 Though a well known Biblical passage (Exodus 33:20), the notion that the face of a deity cannot be viewed directly has equivalents in other mythologies, such as Greek and Hindu.

155 rejection of a transcendental signifier” (Wolfson 489). Drob further points out that Lurianic

Kabbalah includes a ‘trace’ ( reshimu ), a positive element within the void created by tzimtzum that is analogous to Derrida’s notion of the trace, that which ensures difference is never complete

(8). For Derrida, différance implies differing and deferring, elements of both space and time.

Language defers presence, creating difference between signifier and signified. Tzimtzum similarly allows for the differentiation of Creation from the Creator, concealing divine presence from human consciousness. Thus union with the divine is continually deferred, allowing for the finite to exist within the infinite (Drob 10). However, whereas kabbalists would argue the divine absence in tzimzum actually indicates a divine presence, Derrida would maintain that the absence is genuine, denying any essential reality beyond language. 28 This wordplay of absence and presence is vital to the understanding of occultism because it addresses issues that not only question what, if anything, is being hidden (occulted), but also how knowledge is hidden and revealed. The dynamic of concealment and revelation is a crucial part of Lurianic Kabbalah’s creation myth. Kabbalists, and occultists who imitate their techniques, re-perform the originary act of concealing and revelation through wordplay and language manipulation, whether it is through the puzzles of gematria or the embodiment of divine names that come into play with prayer and magick. This dynamic also influences how occultists write their histories, propagate their traditions and initiate their neophytes. It is the play of the secret, speaking what cannot be spoken. For deconstructionists, the secret is that there is no secret--that nothing exists beyond the

28 Wolfson explains this difference as such: “For the kabbalist, unlike Derrida, divine alterity does not preclude an ontological presumption regarding the superessentiality of God’s being. In the writings of kabbalists, therefore, the absence of God, his withdrawal from the spectrum of the visible, signifies God’s presence most fully, whereas, for Derrida, absence is a genuine absence and not merely an absence of what is present even if what is present is truly absent” (505).

156 play of language. Ostensibly, this would seem to be the opposite of kabbalists’ assertion of the divinity of language or occultists’ tireless claim to possess the secrets of the universe.

However, difference between deconstruction and kabbalistic wordplay may not be as different as they seem.

For instance, ceremonial magician Lon Milo DuQuette argues that techniques like gematria are not to objectively reveal secrets as such, but rather to sidestep conscious thought and “overcome the fundamental defect in your powers of perception.” This defect is one that prevents humans from understanding how they are connected to everything else. The kabbalist,

DuQuette claims, must recognize these defective perceptions and be “willing to abuse them until they break” ( Chicken Qabalah 21). As opposed to the Eastern mystic who strives to empty his mind, the kabbalist fills it with connections until nothing is left outside the connections. In

Kabbalah, there is no one overarching, authoritative Message. Rather, there are conflicting messages, countless differences of meaning, that vary depending on who is doing the searching and interpreting. In this case, the kabbalistic quest for secrets through language is a highly subjective and personal one. Ultimately, the secret that there is no secret applies here as well, because the kabbalist does not ever finally arrive at some grand objective truth. Rather, to use

Lurianic terms, the kabbalist achieves tikkun , improving himself by spiritual means through prayer and meditation on the Word (the Torah ). Specifically referring to kabbalistic technique, a character in Umberto Eco’s occult novel, Foucault’s Pendulum , tells us “the important thing is not the finding, it is the seeking, it is the devotion with which one spins the wheel of prayer and

157 scripture, discovering the truth little by little. . . The word must be eaten very slowly. It must melt on the tongue before you can dissolve and reorder it (33). 29

But what is the nature of this Word? As we stated before, one of the primary building blocks for kabbalistic meditation is the divine name, often represented by the Tetragrammaton

(YHVH). This name which is not a name, but rather an unpronounceable acronym, is just one of many names for divinity that Kabbalists utilize in prayers, meditation and magick. 30 Again,

Derrida enters into this kabbalistic arena when he contemplates the divine name. He speaks of the holy name in terms of “its untranslatability but also its iterability (which is to say, of that which makes it a site of repeatability, of idealization and therefore, already, of technoscience. . .), of its link to performativity of calling in prayer, of its bond to that which appeals to the faith of the other” (“Faith and Knowledge” 46). Here, Derrida recognizes the paradox involved in the use of a name like YHVH, which is unspeakable, even though it is used in prayer and exercises like the Middle Pillar. Ultimately this recognizes the magical power of naming, which Derrida describes as

an enveloped virtuality, a potentiality that can be brought or not to actuality; it is hidden,

buried, dormant. . . . This is indeed an explicit motif in certain trends of the Kabbalah.

The magical power of the name produces effects said to be real and over which we are

not in command. The name hidden in its potency possesses a power of manifestation and

of occultation, of revelation and encrypting. ( Acts 213-214)

29 The concept of eating divine knowledge can be linked to a particular Ashkenazic initiation ceremony in which the initiate eats cakes decorated with passages from the Torah. See Grimes, Deeply into the Bone: Re- Inventing Rites of Passage (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002) 132-3.

30 A few of the other oft-used divine names in kabbalah and ceremonial magick are ‘Adonai’ (Lord), ‘Eheieh’ (I am that am) and ‘Elohim’ (the name used for God in Genesis).

158 Again, Derrida highlights the process of revealing and concealing that is not only inherent to occultism, but to language itself. Taken a step further, the vibration of the holy name becomes a technique, using language as a magical tool, a prosthesis. The goal is transformation of spirit into matter, as in the Jewish legend of the golem, or conversely of the matter of the magician into spirit attuned to the divine.

The holy name not only becomes fragmented in order to facilitate permutation; it becomes erased even as it is invoked. Following the practice of Christian mystics, meditation on the word becomes more than just exegesis, it becomes a bodily digestion: a swallowing, as

Michel de Certeau reminds us when he quotes Madame Guyon in “The Institution of Rot.” The mystical word in the act of intake occupies an interspace, and “demands attention even though it has nothing to justify it other than what it produces here and there: a ‘formula’ that is heard, a

‘small fragment of truth’ - a splinter of what?” ( Heterologies 36). This mystical word, a name of

God, is often invoked in Kabbalistic ritual as flaming letters, a substantive visualization. The power of the Kabbalistic magician consists in the ability to bring words, images, and ideas into manifestation. Therefore, the magician visualizes the holy name before it is uttered, and through an act of will, creates a simulacrum in the Yetziratic world, a realm of existence consisting of images and ideas awaiting manifestation. 31 Often referred to by magical practitioners as “the astral plane,” this spirit world is the primary conduit through which magical acts are performed.

The magician finally brings the power of the name into physical manifestation (the Assiatic world) by the act of utterance, performed in what is known as a vibratory formula, in which the

31 This terminology comes from the Kabbalistic notion of the Four Worlds, four different planes of existence to explain how creation moves from the realm of ideas to manifestation into our reality, a process that a magician can ultimately copy (DuQuette, Chicken Qabalah 81).

159 word is loudly and resonantly chanted. 32 The magical act consists, then, in traversing the astral gap between the potentially spoken and the actually spoken. Invoking the sacred language into the body, transforming discourse into an embodied practice, is thus an essential part of

Kabbalistic magic. This vibratory formulae, which uses divine names to awaken certain microcosmic energies in the magician’s body, is a performative process in which the vibration of words grants them authority to act, and to act magically. In a less abstract fashion, this same process applies equally to other, more practical, kinds of magical acts, as we will see in later chapters.

A Prescription from Plato’s Pharmacy

We will stay with Derrida a little longer, in order to further unravel the intricate occult connections between language, writing, and magic and provide a link to the writing of occult history. Through much of his career, Derrida concentrated on deconstructing the binaries of the

Western “metaphysics of presence,” that characterizes speech as a kind of presence and writing as haunted by an absence. In several of his works he emphasizes the play of differences between speech and writing, in which language and texts never arrive at stable meanings and undecidability threatens to disrupt the foundations of philosophy and religion. This play between writing and speech figures prominently in “Plato’s Pharmacy,” the first essay in Derrida’s

Dissemination . Here, Derrida recounts a tale told by Plato in the Socratic dialogue known as the

Phaedrus , in which the Egyptian god Thoth (Theuth to the Greeks) presents writing as a gift for

32 Ceremonial magicians also use Enochian in this vibratory manner. Geoffrey James, in his presentation of John Dee’s Enochian system, accordingly refers to Da Vinci’s speculation that spirits would not be able to make sounds, because their incorporeal forms would necessarily lack vocal chords (xxx). This reason was also given to me when I was instructed in Enochian pronunciation by the Hermetic Order. Angels do not have ears either, so it was the vibration of the sounds, not their pronunciation that mattered.

160 humanity, offering it up to Ammon-Ra (Thamus), the king, for approval. Thoth proudly claims that writing is a great tool that will aid in memory, while Ammon-Ra counters that Thoth has rather provided a supplement to memory, merely a flawed replacement.

From the very beginning, Derrida reminds us of the inescapable double meanings and ironic correspondences surrounding the figure of Thoth as an Egyptian god. Not only is he the god of numbers, both rational and occult sciences like astrology and alchemy, but of magical formulas, “of secret accounts, of hidden texts, an archetype of Hermes, god of cryptography no less than of every other –graphy” (93). Appropriately, Derrida plays with the multivalent figure of Thoth. Derrida’s Thoth is the pharmakon, simultaneously remedy and poison. Thoth is at once trickster, healer, magician, god of the underworld, scribe to the gods, gambler, and mathematician. As Plato tells the myth, Thoth presents his gift of writing to humankind as a techné: a mnemonic device and an occult art, which unwittingly adds to the loss of their embodied, oral memory. It is Thoth that introduces difference into language, the gap between the fixed divine pattern of thought and the written message, as well as the plurality of different languages. 33

Throughout “Plato’s Pharmacy,” Derrida highlights these ironies through a pattern of binaries such as speech/writing, father/son, Ra/Thoth, logos/eidos, Socrates/Plato. He even takes the trouble to mention that the meaning of Ammon-Ra implies a hiddenness. However, he notes that this may be due to the Egyptian scribes intentionally confusing the name with the word that

33 These issues of orality and textuality are foundational to the study of magical practice and occult history itself. The notion of a sacred priesthood passing down secrets in both oral and hieroglyphic form is an essential part of such traditions. And this, of course, is not confined to Egyptian myth, or for that matter, Kabbalah. For instance, a popular explanation for the lack of materials on the Celtic priesthood known as the Druids is that, for these priests, to write the mysteries was to profane them, thus only oral tradition was allowed. See The Druids , Peter Berresford Ellis, 13.

161 means ‘to hide,’ or ‘to conceal oneself’ (87). Thus, not only is the name itself significant in

its evocation of the foundation of occult principles (the hidden), but the notion that the meaning

is derived from particular wordplay is also congruous with our understanding of occultist

language so far. What we can also speculate from this is that, for Derrida, ideas involving the

occult are an essential component in theorizing about language and textuality. This is

demonstrated especially in his presentation of Socrates as the pharmakeus, the wizard accused of

casting spells on the unsuspecting through his words, who essentially takes on the role of

sacrificial scapegoat for Athens. In a further irony, Derrida notes Plato’s particularly harsh

attitude towards any form of magic and mimesis, particularly painting, as well as the severe

punishments he suggests for such wizards.

To take the correspondence even further, Thoth is also the inspiration for the semi-divine

Hermes Trismegistus, the pseudo-mythical figure whose attributed writings became the

foundation for Hermeticism, itself an occult philosophy combining Neoplatonism with

Christianized cabala to form the foundation for Western magical practice in the Renaissance

period. The aforementioned ambivalence of identity is part and parcel of the occult philosophy of

that period which, as we have noted, relied on complex systems of correspondences. Further,

Hermetic scholars consider the Phaedrus as a primary source on Hermes Trismegistus and neoplatonic ideals, studying it alongside the Corpus Hermetica as a part of Hermetic literature.

In fact, Ficino himself produced an unfinished commentary on the Phaedrus in 1496 shortly before his death. 34 Using the Phaedrus to reflect on his interest in magic, Ficino comments on the necessary ability of the magician to “adjust his discourse to constant, myriad changes”

34 See Michael J.B. Allen, The Platonism of Marsilio Ficino: A Study of His Phaedrus Commentary, Its Sources and Genesis. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1984).

162 (Covino 16-17). As a pharmakon, Thoth is always balancing on the cusp of undecidability.

He is a trickster figure, a god of gambling, of sleight of hand, of performing. Derrida characterizes him as a sort of “joker, a floating signifier, a wild card, one who puts play into play” ( Dissemination 91). Further, he is Hermes Trismegistus, the archetypal model for the magicians, the crafty practitioner who consequently must play a double game when negotiating writing in an occult context.

Occult texts by definition are problematic because of their uncertain origins and the notion that they are never truly finished. Thus, text-making itself can be seen as a magical activity, and as we have seen, the Hermetic and Kabbalistic notion of language is based on a tricky interplay between the divine and human. Significantly, “Plato’s Pharmacy” returns us to the notion of the unwritten Kabbalah, a text whose origins are as elusive as its endings. Derrida begins the essay with what would seem an occultist take on textuality:

A text is not a text unless it hides from its first comer, from the first glance, the law of its

composition and the rules of its game. A text remains, moreover, imperceptible. Its laws

and its rules are not, however, harbored in the inaccessibility of the secret; it is simply

that they can never be booked, in the present, into anything that could rigorously be

called a perception. And hence, perpetually and essentially, they run the risk of being

definitively lost (63).

By characterizing the text as a willful participant in a trick of hiding, but then denying that this hiding and disappearance is due to a secret, Derrida is playing the classic role of the trickster magician who must deny the existence of the secret while at the same time propagating it. Here, he argues for the undecidability of the text, which would seem to be in an always already relationship with the occult, the hidden and mysterious. He continually brings this dialogue

163 between written text and occult into play, especially when he cites Plato’s own characterization of “writing as an occult, and therefore, suspect power” (97). At stake here is the inability of the text, as Derrida states, to be “booked into a perception,” involving both the survival and preservation of texts, specifically, in the case of Egyptian myth and Platonic teachings, both ancient texts.

If we consider Derrida’s tendency to uncover the dichotomy between writing and speech as an analogy for absence and presence, Versluis’ notion of ahistorical continuity in the history of Western occultism takes on a different shade. Initiatic texts exist because of an absence of a physical initiatory tradition. The Western neophyte may need these texts because of the absence of flesh and blood teachers to pass down the secrets. Thus the concept of ahistorical continuity that encompasses initiation through texts takes part in the dynamic of absence and presence.

Although the initiate yearns for presence, to be in the same physical ritual space as his initiators, he must satisfy himself with the absence that haunts initiatic texts. And this doubles the yearning of the mystic for God’s presence, presenting the conflict between the need for unmediated contact with the divine (mysticism) and the mediation provided by texts and rituals (magick).

Therefore, language, both as metaphor, in the case of Hermeticists “reading” the world through symbols and correspondences, and as literal object, in the case of texts produced with the purpose of illuminating mystery, is essential to the occult operation. As the Thoth story demonstrates, writing, magickal or otherwise, balances on the boundary between concealment and revelation. Language is the key to communication with the divine and to understanding the

Mysteries, but it can also be a Tower of Babel that forever obscures the secrets. But in these cases, language is never just written. It is a trace of ritual and the marginalia of angelic visions. It is the performing body that vibrates flaming names. Occult language here is not the cracking of a

164 code but creating it through interpretation. The true occult secret is not ‘uncovered.’ Rather

the occult lies in establishing relationships and connections between concepts and learning from

the connections. This is how Dee worked, this is what kabbalists do and even Derrida

acknowledges it in différance . Occultism is the undecidability of the text, of the word that leads to enlightenment, not the revelation of a secret, which might ultimately be meaningless in itself.

Conclusion

In this chapter, I have explored how language functions in occultism. Occult concepts of language are fundamental aspects of occult philosophy and practice, playing significant roles in how occultists experience both transcendent and cosmological gnosis, manifesting in both daily practice and initiation rites. Here, reading, writing and speaking serve performative functions in which language literally creates the universe, as evidenced by our study of kabbalistic linguistics.

In this formulation, initiation is a performative speech act that creates a separate, hidden space for the candidate to encounter the divine. Accordingly, the use of magical language enacts a nostalgic occult project to reestablish a state of perfect communication with divine forces, a return to a kind of Garden of Eden where humanity can reconnect with God. This points to initiation’s attempt to further raise the candidate to a higher level of consciousness and gnostic union with the divine and the cosmos. By reading and speaking magical language, the candidate may truly enter into conversation with God, sparking his or her transformation. Speaking has a magical, performative effect.

By focusing on John Dee’s Monas Hieroglyphica and his Enochian conversations, I have also demonstrated how both symbolism and dialogic encounter are performative engagements with occult knowledge that manifest in practice, particularly initiation rites. Esotericism scholar

165 Christopher Lehrich has similarly argued that John Dee understood the Monas and the

Enochian dialogues as part of the same project, in that they both deal with two sides of a

“magical coin”: the one side representing “acquisition of visionary knowledge,” while the other side emphasizes interpretation of this knowledge ( Occult Mind 52). Indeed, Lehrich contends that “the practice of thinking and analyzing the monad is itself a performance of and encounter with the universe of signs standing outside the monad” ( Occult Mind 54). 35 Thus, meditating on symbols and speaking occult languages within the context of initiation is an occult performance in which the candidate engages with knowledge through the experience of reading and speaking.

This performance may occur within a ritualized setting, such as initiation, or it may be, as Arthur

Versluis has argued, that a candidate may experience this gnosis on his or her own without the aid of formal initiators or initiations. This metaphysics of presence is seemingly alive and well in practitioner’s debates about initiation. In the contemporary occultism market, glutted by self- initiation manuals and practical texts for solo practitioners, there is still an understanding that these books are no substitute for face-to-face initiations, or rather, hands-on, embodied experience. However, as we will see in subsequent chapters, contemporary occultism allows considerable play between text and practice, absence and presence. One such area is the occultist’s approach to history, encompassing the uncertain discourse surrounding origins and the undecidability of the hoax text. We turn next to the construction of these texts and the origin stories of the groups that deployed them.

35 In an interesting comparison between the function of Dee’s monad and that of Japanese No drama, Lehrich suggests that “the total performance of No” may be read as “a dynamic symbol into which the meditating audience enters” ( Occult Mind 64).

166 Chapter Four

“The Inverted Image of Practice”: Hoax Texts and The Invention of Occult Tradition

In the previous chapter we investigated various ways in which reading and writing, in both a practical and metaphorical sense, play significant roles in constructing and interpreting the occult universe. Through networks of correspondences, occultists “read” signs and draw conclusions through analogies. With Kabbalah, a mystical system that has continued to influence esotericism and occultism from the early modern period to today, practitioners rely on philosophies, cosmogonies and practices that inherently support a concealment/revelation dynamic, providing a performative basis for language itself. In this sense, the performative centers around the restorative action implied by mystical language, namely that the Hebrew language literally conceals and reveals the secrets of Creation and, ultimately, the seeds for

Redemption. It is this restorative quality of language and magic that appealed most directly to occultists like John Dee who applied these kabbalistic ideas to their own search for universal truth.

Yet, occultists understand the act of initiation as not just a mystical journey for one person. Rather, the journey of one person achieving gnostic union with the divine stands in for the whole of humanity evolving to a higher plane of consciousness. This grand narrative invariably involves a certain perception of History and humanity’s place in it. On one level, initiation rites may address this, as mine did, by establishing the place of the candidate in a genealogy of tradition. Thus, a Masonic initiate understands that he is joining a Brotherhood with considerable history and that he now plays a role in the future development of the organization.

He is bound to a tradition and the oaths of that tradition. Therefore, any candidate’s training would include an education on the background and genealogy of the particular group. However,

167 that background is itself likely to be an occult construct, a tapestry combining facts, theories, myth and legend, and imaginative narratives.

In this chapter, I continue my examination of text and narrative, exploring the tricky process of creating history and authenticity. This process is so caught up in the revelation/concealment dynamic that occultism becomes a kind of serious playing, a performance of secrecy and manifestation. I will mainly focus on two esoteric movements indicative of the Enlightenment period, Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry. With the former, I specifically address the use of what I call a “hoax text” that creates the illusion of authenticity, and how the discourse surrounding these texts demonstrates the occult principles established in the previous chapter. With the latter, I demonstrate how these occult principles are similarly applied to the creation and transmission of an esoteric tradition and how that tradition is maintained through continuous historical revision, discourse and ritual reinvention. Additionally, with the aid of Umberto Eco, Walter Benjamin, and Michel de Certeau, I outline occultism’s textual and performative approaches to history.

As we have seen with John Dee’s work, occult textuality is essential to the project of occult history. While a search for origins is a significant part of the occult historical project, it is not necessarily a quest for an “authentic” origin. Returning to Benjamin, Wolin explains that although the writer’s goal

can at times take the form of a static, purely restorative conception of redemption, quite

often it is infused with radical and utopian elements: it need imply the reestablishment of

a pristine, original state of things; but according to a more dynamic reading, redemption

signifies a return to a content merely implicit in the original paradisiacal state. . . . Origin

is still the goal, but not as a fixed image of the past that must be recaptured in toto , but

168 rather as the fulfillment of a potentiality that lies dormant in origin, the attainment of

which simultaneously represents a quantum leap beyond the original departure. (39)

This Kabbalistic theory of the origin, Wolin tells us, further explains Benjamin’s

penchant for privileging fragmentary works of art over “totality-oriented” classical works, an

emphasis that recalls our earlier discussion of miscellanies. For Benjamin, authenticity was in the

fragments: “the more it presents itself as a ruin, the more it refers to that sphere beyond historical

life where redemption lies” (Wolin 59). Benjamin’s fragmentary work of art most certainly also

refers to the text, and in our case, the occult text, in which “a type of negative semiology

whereby the profane order, if reversed, can be shown to hold the key to the sacred” (Wolin 60).

Further, if the text is “authentic,” “it will contain, foreshortened, the entire past and subsequent

history of an art form within itself, collected magically into a totality, a focal point, as it were. It

will thereby serve as living proof of the thesis that the universal must be deduced from within the boundaries of the particular” (Wolin 98). Benjamin’s notion of authenticity in terms of a focal point (a monad) absolutely echoes the “as above, so below” of Hermetic philosophy, as well as

John Dee’s own Monas Hieroglyphica , in which a single symbol contained the secrets of the universe. The fragmented and hoax-ridden occult historical text, then, is certainly “authentic” in

Benjamin’s sense, and adheres closely to the Kabbalistic origin that allows for the fragmented text to contain the potential for magical practice.

Similarly, Susan Buck-Morss uncovers the hermeneutics of reading sacred texts kabbalistically:

[A]s mysticism, it reads them for hidden meanings that could not have been known at the

time of their writing, rejecting the historicist approach of interpreting texts in terms of

authorial intent. Unconcerned with recapturing original meanings or with extrinsic

169 concerns of historical accuracy, these mystics took delight in invention, often

interpreting passages in a manner as remote as possible from Rabbinical philosophy.

Their concern for tradition is in the interest of transformation rather than preservation. . . .

One cannot interpret the truth of present reality without past texts, but this reality

transforms radically the way these texts are read, reveres the past in order to break from

it. ( Dialectics of Seeing 233)

Thus, in the process of occult analysis, we begin with the occult text itself. The writing has unclear origins, authorship, and authenticity. Writing history as a transformative act is one of the primary moves of occult tradition. In fact, history as narrative is an essential factor for occult practitioners. It is a common convention for magickal practitioners to understand magickal history primarily through their practice. Practitioners might make connections to history by noting that a certain symbol or phrase is from an older tradition, thus giving the ritual, and the practice itself, an ancient pedigree. For instance, this might be a phrase in Hebrew from a kabbalistic text or a concept from Neoplatonism, or even a reference to the Templars in a

Masonic rite. That is not to say that these older beliefs do not occasionally directly influence modern practices, but that these older practices are part of the story that contemporary ceremonial magick tells about itself.

As occultism entered into a new period with the Enlightenment, individuals decided to apply these ideas about language and the relation between humans and the cosmos to a more social and secular setting. If ancient Greece and Egypt, the pillars of Western historical fantasy, had secret, initiatory societies that brought their members closer to the mysteries of the universe, then it was time to reform that current and rebuild these pillars in order to affect change in a fallen world. One of the “secrets” behind this venture was that of ahistorical continuity. Groups

170 had to create and maintain an illusion of historical continuity and did so through elaborate

origin stories that established their particular history as authentic and sacred. Two main conduits

for these narratives are esoteric text and ritual initiation, which we will address later.

Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry both disseminated mythic histories through

performative means. Rosicrucianism originally began as a story, a generative hoax that created

itself through a text. These groups exemplify a particular approach to history that is at once

occult, ludic, performative and redolent with the connective tactics of Michel de Certeau’s

poaching. In The Writing of History , de Certeau implies this ludic and occult aspect to the connection between writing and practice within historiography:

Could writing therefore be the inverted image of practice? It would have the merit of

mirror writing, as in all cryptographies, in children’s games, or in counterfeiters’

imitations of coins, fictions forging deceit and secrets, tracing the sign of a silence

through the inversion of a normative practice and its social coding . . . in using a past in

order to deny the present that they repeat, they set apart something foreign to current

social relations, they produce secrets within language. . . . Mirror writing is serious

because of what it does – it states something other through the inversion of the code of

practice; it is illusory only insofar as, not realizing what it is doing, one takes its secret to

what it puts into language, and not what it subtracts from it . . . . Playing on both sides, at

once contractual and legendary, both performative writing and mirror writing,

historiography has the ambivalent status of “producing history” and also of “telling

stories”--that is, it imposes the constraints of power, and it provides loopholes. (87-88)

De Certeau’s claims about historiography provide an important foundation for the role of discourse in this chapter. Occult discourse, particularly when it is dealing with interpretations of

171 historical events, constantly plays on the charged boundary between “producing history” and

“telling stories.” This is often because these texts provide an alternate understanding of a social or political context. To this end, occult texts that deal with history seem to follow three strategies. They promise the revelation of secrets and hidden messages, teasing us with the possibility that the history we have been taught may be incomplete, that something else is going on, behind the scenes, between the lines, and in the margins. Secondly, these texts also play on the suspicion that seemingly disparate events and people may actually be connected. Whether the reader sees correspondence, the occult method of reading and interpreting signs or connections, or conspiracy, may vary. Finally, the text may call into question its own origins, claiming an authenticity based on supposedly ancient sources, but often dropping hints that other factors, and indeed, other authors, are at work. De Certeau’s mention of cryptographies, coin tricks and forgeries also suggests that a kind of sleight of hand is at work here, a mode of trickery. Just as

Hermes and Thoth are gods of writing and communication, they are also trickster gods, patron saints of magicians, both onstage and off.

The Occult Conspiracy , by practitioner Michael Howard, might serve as a further illustration of these notions of occultism as history. Though described as a “speculative and amusing account” of the influence of secret societies in world events, Howard’s version of

European and American history has been cited for its “interesting details” and authors such as

Ronald Hutton have respected his authority. 1 Howard’s account gives us the best example of an occult history. Behind each major world conflict, for instance, from the American and French

1 The description of The Occult Conspiracy is a footnote in Daniel van Egmond’s essay, “Western Esoteric Schools” in Gnosis and Hermeticism (341). Hutton lauds Howard as “the most open-minded of Pagan editors” for his work on Gardnerian history in occultist journals (219).

172 Revolutions to the World Wars, a secret society has supposedly exerted its influence. These are the versions hidden from the history books and the “official” records. Of course, it is only a short leap to full blown conspiracy theory. Secondly, these groups always seem to have origins that are at once ancient and apocryphal, not unlike the pattern that the Corpus Hermetica demonstrates. Texts and groups alike seem haunted by hoaxes and tricks. Finally, Howard establishes that all of these events and players are linked by obscure correspondences. This process of interweaving historical events, mysterious personas and occult practices is itself an occult strategy, advocated by many practitioners, that could be described as a further application of historiographical poaching.

Here, we have a strong link between the writing of occult history and the practice of occultism itself. Let us return to Faivre’s categories for esotericism: 1) the notion of correspondence, as between microcosm and macrocosm, embodied in the Hermetic axiom “As above, so below”; 2) the sense of living nature, in which nature can be both read and manipulated; 3) imagination and mediation, in which the use of symbols is essential to understanding divine and natural principles; 4) the experience of transmutation and transmission, important to alchemy and initiation. The writing of occult history follows these patterns by establishing correspondences: reading and using signs, both in “nature,” which one could redefine as events or even performances, and in texts. Finally, the writing itself is a mode of transmission, intended to pass on the secrets that lurk in the shadows of established history, creating a link in the chain of ahistorical continuity. Historical accuracy is certainly not as important as a good, speculative yet plausible, story. As Umberto Eco proclaims through one of the characters in his 1988 novel, Foucault’s Pendulum , when he attempts to read and construct occult history, “The rule is simple: suspect, only suspect” (377). Rational debunking of

173 seemingly unexplainable mysteries and invented narratives are merely beside the point. For

our purposes, Eco’s novel will provide a salient model for the writing of occult texts, the

production of occult history, and the sacred, magical nature of language itself.

Suspect, Only Suspect: Foucault’s Pendulum as Occult Method

My main purpose in invoking this novel lies in offering the work as a model for the interaction between language, text, history, and practice. In the novel, the main characters entertain themselves by inventing a conspiracy, involving a Plan that somehow connects all of

Western occult history. They then imagine a fictional secret group who can put this Plan into action for purposes of world domination. The irony is that they do their job so well that occultists begin to appear and assume the identity of the secret group, proceeding to terrorize the main characters in order to gain information about this insidious Plan. In this fiction, the fictional becomes real. The main characters, Diatollevi, Belbo, and the narrator Casaubon, gain access to a vast amount of research material to use for the Plan because they work for a publishing house specifically for “SFAs”: self-financing authors. Casaubon first enters the scene, fresh from a

Ph.D. thesis on the medieval esoteric group known as the Templar Knights. 2 Strange events

ensue, including a visit from a particularly strange SFA: the paranoid Colonel Ardenti, who

offers fragments of a coded message he believes is of dire importance to understanding the

Templars’ continuing mission in Europe. Not long after, Ardenti disappears and is assumed

abducted. Eventually, other authors appear and add more fragments to the story. After a

2 Eco’s character seems to come from a long line of textual debunkers by the name of Casaubon. It is curiously unclear if there is any connection between Isaac Casaubon, who uncovered the true date of the Corpus Hermeticum , and Meric Casaubon, who wrote the exposé on Dee’s Enochian operations. In fact at one point, Frances Yates conflates the two ( The Rosicrucian Enlightenment 188).

174 significant accretion of events, the gentlemen of Manutius, the publishing company whose

scam is essentially to take advantage of egotistical amateur writers, decide to launch the

decidedly tricky Project Hermes, a series of books on occult topics.

Eco’s characters are remarkably intelligent and savvy, somewhat leftist but often

politically apathetic products of post-1968 Europe, a time in which significant radical theorists

like Michel Foucault (not the one from the novel’s title, incidentally) were emerging. Indeed, the

setting of Milan and Paris in a ten-year period between the early 1970’s and 1980’s provides a

significant backdrop for the cynicism and malaise of an intellectual elite with a lot of time on

their hands. These men initially gain a sort of pleasure from manipulating fact and history while

duping misunderstood authors with a heightened sense of importance. Yet, as in most mystery

thrillers, even intellectual ones, the game turns deadly, and the main characters play it a bit too

well. These characters, like their creator, are brimming over with obscure knowledge and

intellectual trivia. They have done their homework. Eco himself displays the vast range of his

knowledge and research not only through the characters’ extended speeches and discussions of

history, but by the use of epigraphs at the beginning of each chapter, from sources as disparate as

Tertullian, Francis Bacon, and Joseph Heller. Intertextuality is not just a theme here; it is the

modus operandi. Texts literally speak to each other in fantastic ways. The characters present

certain historical “facts” alongside wild conjecture and blatant non sequitur, and all have equal

weight. Yet it is not just the historical connections themselves but their particular quality that is

significant in Foucault’s Pendulum . Eco’s novel is replete with inside jokes relating to occult history, academia and the literary world, and late-twentieth-century European politics.

Innuendoes, double entendres, and other sorts of wordplay also inhabit Eco’s text, lending it and its heroes a ludic quality in sharp contrast to the actual occultists who are shown taking

175 themselves far too seriously. It is this ludic approach to the occult that may reveal a hidden truth within a postmodern political context.

The novel demonstrates four major aspects of the network of language, text, and practice.

First, the characters treat language and words as a magical tool par excellence . By arranging and rearranging facts and words, the characters create something. Secondly, the something they create is an occult text, in which a secret message lies hidden, waiting for the clever magus who can decode it. Third, this text in turn is performative. The text creates an actual magical group by luring various magical practitioners with the prize of secret knowledge and power. Finally, Eco’s novel, piling fiction upon fiction as the main characters research occult history, becomes a kind of occult history itself, as the reader maneuvers through historical “stories” and citations from actual occult texts and authors. For its characters, the novel becomes a sacred, but deadly, initiatory journey, a point reiterated by the fact that Eco divides the novel into sections based on the ten sephirot of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. Thus, Foucault’s Pendulum provides a method by which to analyze the process of occult language, textuality, and transmission. Both Eco and his main characters model an occult method similar to John Dee’s “poaching,” regarding literary and practical texts as fodder for magical workings. The practitioner mixes and matches disconnected and fragmented texts in order to discover their hidden connection, to uncover their

“secret.” Poaching is an historiographical method of reading and interpreting text, particularly by those viewing Western occultism with both a scholar’s and a practitioner’s eye. The recording of history, writing and discourse itself are put through an initiation in order to emerge as a new entity: the occult historical text.

Eco’s characters begin by experimenting with the magical, occult nature of language.

Belbo and Diotallevi’s playful and mischievous methods are presented early on when Belbo,

176 fascinated with the ability of a word processor to manipulate text, acquires a computer and, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, lauds it as a mystical tool. He further acknowledges the occult possibilities of a computer that protects secrets with passwords and magically transfers information to disk, easily transported and easily erased if it falls into the wrong hands. The first operation he performs is a simple program that calculates possible permutations for the

Tetragrammaton, the secret name of God in Hebrew scripture. Ultimately, Eco’s characters perform a kind of gematria with their computer. Like Abraham Abulafia’s method, Belbo intends for the computer to find correspondences between Hebraic phrases by comparing their numerical value. Words or phrases with identical sums are then connected and interpreted in order to find subtle meanings in the text. Depending on how the letters are combined, arranged, recombined, and rearranged, an innumerable set of hidden meanings can be discovered. Not only is the text never finished, it continually hides a secret. Given that gematria is so mathematically based, it is no surprise that the tool for recombination of letters in order to discover a secret plan in

Foucault’s Pendulum is a computer, and to further the connection, Belbo aptly names the machine, “Abulafia.” Suggesting a thin line between technical and mystical, Eco creates a contemporary context for occult poaching, in which sacred language can be decontextualized and rearranged according to the will of the reader/magician. 3 However, Diotallevi, a would-be

Kabbalist at pains to prove his Jewish heritage, initially resists the computerized golem, seeing it as a shortcut to divine wisdom, advising “If this machine gave you the truth immediately, you would not recognize it, because your heart would not have been purified by the long quest” (33).

Diotallevi rejects technology for tradition, positing the notion of the “unwritten” Kabbalah, the

3 In a kind of chaos theory approach to research, Belbo has the idea for this random combination when his cleaning lady accidentally knocks over a stack of occult manuscript pages and reassembles them haphazardly.

177 “cabala of nature” referred to by the natural philosophers of the late medieval period. This

“book” is the opposite of scripture, always in the process of being written even as it maintains its incorporeality: in essence, the ultimate readerly text, an interactive occult textualization as we discussed in the previous chapter.

The debate about computerized gematria provides a precedent for the characters to apply their technique to a kind of historical gematria as well. Belbo, Casaubon, and Diotallevi soon learn that this process of recombination becomes the ultimate technology for finding hidden meanings. They begin their experiment as an intellectual exercise, feeding the computer random statements connecting various “facts” in occult history. But this is not enough, Casaubon claims:

“The challenge isn’t to find occult links between Debussy and the Templars. Everybody does that. The problem is to find occult links between for example, cabala and the spark plugs of a car” (377). After a few days of contemplation, Belbo returns with this response:

You were right. Any fact becomes important when it's connected to another. The

connection changes the perspective; it leads you to think that every detail of the world,

every voice, every word written or spoken has more than its literal meaning, that it tells

us of a Secret. The rule is simple: Suspect, only suspect. . . .Last night I happened to

come across a driver’s manual. Maybe it was the semidarkness, or what you had said to

me, but I began to imagine that those pages were saying Something Else. (377-8)

The two then proceed to do just that, as Eco devotes three pages to a mystical interpretation of the inner workings of an automobile. It is at this moment when the two are able to link mystical interpretation with mundane objects, one could argue, that they truly become initiates. Eco’s characters, in essence, become semiotic occult detectives, and achieve a kind of jouissance from making connections and drawing correspondences. Despite his initial misgivings, even Diatollevi

178 is eventually seduced, as he proclaims “Chapter by chapter, we are reconstructing the history

of the world. . . . We are rewriting the Book. I like it, I really like it” (405). Thus, the characters

reach the second stage of occult transmission, when they create a text out of the magical

manipulation of facts and events. Through this process, they come to understand the occult

notion of correspondence and its importance for magical work. The initial rule of correspondence

the characters discover later leads to some more specific rules: 1) “Concepts are connected by

analogy. There is no way to decide at once whether an analogy is good or bad, because to some

degree everything is connected to everything else”; 2) “The connections must not be original.

They must have been made before, and the more often the better, by others. Only then do the

crossings seem true, because they are obvious” (618). Although these rules become problematic

yet powerful postmodern tactics for reading texts, histories, culture, and media in an always

already magical world, their roots are Kabbalistic. 4

In Foucault’s Pendulum , Eco demonstrates that writing and practice are inextricably entwined in the world of Western occultism. The nature of that relationship, however, seems always caught up in a trick. In order to speak about or write occultism, one must always be in the act of erasure, constantly creating palimpsests. Hoax, trickery, and sleight of hand are all major players in both the occult text and the occult performance. Even today, for many practitioners, including myself, the introduction to an occult path is through a text. An occult text often plays an initiatory role with regards to its reader, and it is the sense of “trickery” that not only fascinates the neophyte, but also provides a foundation for the kind of multivalent work that may

4 In letters published in Magick Without Tears , Aleister Crowley recommended that his students construct their own kabbalistic correspondences through their own experiences and observations, including associating key concepts, like Hebrew letters and sephirotic qualities, with objects and people encountered in a walk through the city (51). Thus, the process of seeing and interpreting correspondence is key to the initiate.

179 lie ahead for the practitioner. The occult text strongly participates in a discursive process that may easily lead to an embodied practice, an actual initiation ceremony for the neophyte involved.

For instance, candidates for neophyte initiation in the Golden Dawn were first required to complete extensive reading of instructional texts, often written by experienced members of the group itself, before they could apply for their first initiation ceremony. For many groups based on this ceremonial magick model, the same still holds true. The way in which many occult texts are written, including the character and tone of the writing, models a particularly occult method of mystification, of creating mystery with the potential for various interpretations.

As has already been noted, it is often the performative interaction between magician and secret text that produces magical operations. Performance is inherent to these magical operations, demonstrated by Plato’s story of Thoth who, like his Hellenic counterpart Hermes, was also known as a trickster, a performer of sorts. Here, performance itself is understood to be a trick, a simultaneous state of lie and truth that reveals a higher, hidden wisdom. In the history of Western esotericism and occultism, this performative trickery plays a prominent role in producing performative texts. These texts are performative precisely because they produce results. For instance, some may provide templates for forming an occult group and initiating its members.

Thus, certain texts may have a “magical” effect, causing change to occur in conformity with the will of the texts’ creators. The characters in Foucault’s Pendulum produce such a text, a cipher that creates a fictional secret society. But Eco models this process after the story of

Rosicrucianism, one of the more fascinating pieces of Western occult history.

One particular scene in Foucault’s Pendulum establishes the novel’s historical forbears.

Casaubon tells his lover the story of Descartes and the Rosicrucians (195). After the Rosicrucian

Manifestos had been distributed and had caused an uproar, the hunt was on to find the

180 mysterious brotherhood. One of these interested individuals was the noted philosopher Rene

Déscartes, who had been seeking the Rosicrucians in Germany for some time. When he finally returned to France, he found that the Rosicrucian presence had stirred up such a dangerous scare that he had to take direct action to avoid being accused of one. His plan? Since Rosicrucians were known as “the Invisible Brotherhood,” he made himself as visible as he possibly could, appearing publicly whenever the opportunity presented itself.

This humorous story, recounted in Adrien Baillet’s 1691 biography of Descartes, perfectly illustrates the performative potential of these strange Rosicrucian texts (Yates, Ros.

Enlightenment 115). The Rosicrucian texts produce performances influenced not only by the elite who desire to find them, but by the public that fears them. Déscartes’ performance of visibility lends a further comic element to the proceedings, but also shows us how much the

Rosicrucian manifestos were strongly marked with disembodiment. It took visible embodiment for Descartes to prove he was not a Rosicrucian. As Eco’s Casaubon tells his lover, Amparo,

“The Rosicrucians were everywhere, aided by the fact that they didn’t exist” (200). Revealingly,

Casaubon follows the Rosicrucian story with a speculation about the Gospel writers getting together to fabricate the story of a Messiah, then letting it get wildly out of hand. Eco clearly wants us to believe that most religious textual history is based on this kind of imagination, sleight of hand, and excessive public reaction. Accordingly, the main characters of Eco’s novel follow this model by creating their own secret society with its own mythos. For our purposes, the

Rosicrucian story similarly serves as an intriguing historical case study for a modernist occult movement. Rosicrucianism demonstrates how textual sleight of hand, creative publicity, and an air of mystery can create a method for the transmission of occult knowledge and the establishment of an occult movement that has a life far beyond its inception.

181

Fraternal Rumors: The Rosicrucian Manifestos as Performative Occult Texts

In The Rosicrucians , Christopher McIntosh aptly describes early Rosicrucianism as a specter that haunted Europe, not unlike that of Communism two hundred and fifty years later

(19). Similar to Marx’s specter, the Rosicrucian ghost addressed significant political, religious, and even economic issues of the time. But apparently it was much harder to find an actual

Rosicrucian than a communist. The way in which this ghost made its presence known is similarly significant. After supposed centuries of silence the Rosicrucians made their presence known through anonymous pamphlets and manuscripts.

However, according to the story, one essential event had further sparked the revelation of the Rosicrucian brothers: the discovery of the tomb of their beloved founder, C.R. who lived to the ripe old age of 106, practically a miracle in those times. The Fama narrates the suspenseful scene of the brethren uncovering the tomb layer by layer. The writers describe the tomb in every detail, and it is this description that would provide the blueprint for initiation ceremonies by later

Rosicrucian-influenced groups like the Golden Dawn (Regardie, What You Should Know 84-85).

The discovery is not just of the tomb itself, rich in its symbolic language, but also the body of

C.R., perfectly preserved like any good Catholic saint might be. So it is in this act of discovering the dead that initiation arrives. It is as if the intact corpse itself is calling to the Western world to respond to the Rosicrucian brethren. This exhumation of a body can be seen as analogous to the emergence of the manifestos. Just as the discovery of an “ancient,” secret text precipitates the inception of many occult traditions, it is the textual body that is revealed. And as McIntosh suggests, the opening of the tomb is what sent forth the powerful specter that haunted Europe

(19).

182 This ghostly call deserves note, in that the circuit of transmission is missing a few steps, creating an ahistorical continuity, a sort of occult performative. In the manifesto, the

Rosicrucians explain their method for discovering interested candidates: “And although at this time we make no mention either of names or meetings, yet nevertheless everyone’s opinion shall assuredly come to our hands, in what language so ever it be; nor anybody shall fail, who so gives his name, but to speak with some of us, either by word of mouth, or else, if there be some let, in writing” (251). The manifesto goes on to promise rewards to the earnest and punishments to the false-hearted. It is within these few lines that the Rosicrucians, whoever they might be, created a lasting mystery throughout the 17 th century by simply removing themselves from the equation of communication. In other words, their actual presence, or perhaps one’s knowledge of their presence, is unnecessary for them to respond. If a candidate makes himself known, somehow the

Rosicrucians will mysteriously be aware of it. Either the Rosicrucians are omnipresent and omniscient or they are very good at taking on the habit of the locals, as the rules suggest. In keeping with the mystery, the occulted part of the transmission equation remained so. The

Rosicrucians were determined to adhere to their secrecy. To illustrate the point, they claim, “yea

God hath so compassed us about with clouds, that unto us his servants, no violence or force can be done or committed; wherefore we neither can be seen or known by anybody, except he had the eyes of an eagle” (254). Thus, the Book of Nature so foundational to Hermetic and

Rosicrucian study, though open to “all men,” can only be read and understood by a few (257).

This Book of Nature continues occult themes popular among natural philosophers like

John Dee, particularly that magical writing can serve as a basis for a language both Original and new, allowing the user to express and explain all things at once. In fact, the Confessio is published with a text entitled A Brief Consideration of the More Secret Philosophy by Philip a

183 Gabella, almost a word for word reproduction of John Dee’s Monas Hieroglyphica . Thus, the

message of the manifestos can be seen as continuing the Hermetic tradition, while at the same

time advocating great change in politics, religion, philosophy and education. The idea of a new

age in which scholars with more access to divine knowledge determined policy certainly had its

adherents at the time. Utopian visions were everywhere. Yet the original, mysterious

Rosicrucians found themselves on a curious historical cusp. In his later work, The Rose Cross

and The Age of Reason , McIntosh maps out how the brethren forged a path between the dogma

of the established churches and the rationalistic tendencies of early Enlightenment thinking (26).

He then asks the question whether Rosicrucianism can be seen as a proto-Enlightenment or

proto-Counter-Enlightenment. Although later forms of Rosicrucianism in 18 th -century Germany came to be attached to the latter, McIntosh claims that the original Rosicrucian writings are most certainly indicative of the former. 5 But this Aufklarung certainly has its own mystical character

much different from any later rational philosophy.

But the strength of the manifestos is not really doctrinal or theological, as Faivre has

pointed out, but rather in their brevity and conciseness ( Theosophy 181). Undoubtedly these

elements, mixed with the hypnotic mystery of the whole thing, rendered the movement’s occult

performative undeniably effective. Over two hundred texts responding to the Rosicrucians, both

negatively and positively, were published between 1614 and 1620, and the number reached close

to nine hundred before the century was out (Edighoffer 204). 6 And of course, those are just the

5 McIntosh quotes Michael W. Fischer, who points out that the Rosicrucian notion of progress as unlimited possibilities was significantly different from the medieval notion of a progress as alleviating hardship caused by the fall from paradise (28).

6 It is also interesting to note that McIntosh tells us that Catholics do not play much of a role in this debate, producing only two recorded responses in the years immediately following the manifestos (31).

184 texts historians have found. People, elite and common were certainly talking. Fraternal rumors, indeed. When the furor spread to France, where the Rosicrucian specter was much more feared and hated, sometimes as an instrument of Satan, the rumors appeared in the medium of placards, announcing the arrival of the Brotherhood to “show and teach without books or marks how to speak all languages of the countries where we wish to be, and to draw men from error and death” (McIntosh, Ros. 49). 7 Though some in France dismissed the Rosicrucians as something to talk about when nothing else was going on, many had much more violent reactions, as evidenced by Descartes’ situation.

Responses to Rosicrucianism also continued in text form. One of these is the intriguing

Turris Babel , a collection of twenty-five three-person comedies published in 1619, in which the characters, like Christian Rosenkreutz himself, are allegorical figures. The author, the German scholar Johann Valentin Andreae, represents the Fama and the Confessio as actual characters. In a fine example of dramatized intertextuality, the texts literally speak to each other in dialogical fashion. Here, the Fama is feminine, and seems to be quite critical of the utopian promises of the

Rosicrucians (Edighoffer 196). The Confessio is also a character, as are a number of well-known texts responding to the manifestos, including a work by the alchemist and vocal Rosicrucian supporter Michael Maier’s Silentium Post Clamores (1617). A character made up by Andreae,

Resipicens, gives us, I think, one of the most useful commentaries on the entirety of Rosicrucian discourse:

. . . there is a worry which troubles me: that I have not established sufficiently careful

distinction among the writings which . . . are revealed under the name of the Fraternity.

7 Quoted from Gabriel Naudé, Instruction à la France sur la vérité de l’histoire des Frères de la Rose Croix (Paris, 1623), 27.

185 The fact is that some of them are plainly games; some are very confused; some are

evil; some have their trickery hidden; and finally some are very pious and devout. All

display a certain erudition, and in some it is even very great, but they all show evident

imposture. Anyone who confuses all these writings or thinks they all issue from a single

inspiration indubitably deceives himself. (qtd. in Edighoffer 197)

Andreae seemingly exposes the multiple layers of deception involved with the creation of the

Rosicrucian brotherhood. Further, he warns the overeager reader “in vain do you wait for the

coming of the Brotherhood” (McIntosh, Ros. 30). Yet the game is made even more complex when one realizes that Andreae was, most historians on the subject agree, one of the prime

suspects in the whole Rosicrucian ordeal.

One version of the story begins when Andreae enters the University of Württemberg at

Tübingen as a teenager. Andreae, the grandson of a prominent Lutheran theologian, was

apparently impressed by the pageants made famous by Inigo Jones and travelling English players

(Yates, Ros. En. 31). He almost immediately begins to try his hand at the English style and

produces two comedies and a strange work by the even stranger title of Chemical Wedding , a work also inspired by his father’s interest in alchemy. This short novel, eventually lost, is later mysteriously described by the author as a “ludibrium.” Though one of the primary authorities on the Rosicrucian subject, Frances Yates, translates this as “a fiction, or a jest, of little worth” there may be more to it, as we will see later. This title, Chemical Wedding , would appear again in

1616, as the third anonymously published work associated with the Rosicrucians. What this

Chemical Wedding has in common with Andreae’s lost original, we may never know, but

Andreae almost certainly played a role.

186 Christopher McIntosh, writing less than a decade after Yates, carries the story a bit further and speculates that Andreae got together with his older and more scholarly friends at

Tübingen and discussed the possibilities for a united, religiously tolerant Europe, quite the fantasy in the midst of constant violence between Catholics and Protestants that was part of the reality of European life at the time. McIntosh then looks to a German utopian group with heavily alchemical concerns, formed in 1577, called the Orden der Unzertrennlichen, and links it with a later group called the Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft (the Fruit-Bringing Society) of which

Andreae was a member at its inception in 1617. McIntosh speculates that Andreae’s circle would certainly be interested in his early alchemical work and decide to lift Chemical Wedding’s main character, the allegorical Christian Rosenkreutz, and set him up as the inspirational leader for a new political, religious and philosophical movement called Rosicrucianism. This movement would make its presence known by the two manifestos, the Fama Fraternatitis and the Confessio Fraternatitis , and a new version of Chemical Wedding that would reflect the movement’s philosophy through symbolic means. In another example of an ambiguous Latin term, the word “Fama” in the first manifesto can mean “declaration.” However, the well-known occult fiction writer Colin Wilson, penning the foreword to McIntosh’s The Rosicrucians , reveals that his own dictionary defines fama as “common talk . . . a report, rumour, saying, tradition” (ix). This etymological twist certainly seems quite appropriate, given the effect these documents had among the populace.

If we concede that Andreae was at least partially responsible for the manifestos, his comments both about his “ludibrium” and in Turris Babel are especially illuminating. He practically admits that some sleight of hand was involved and, further, the idea of a universal font of wisdom that the manifestos propound is in itself problematic. Contemporary criticism of

187 the manifestos continues the trend that Andreae helps incite. For instance, Antoine Faivre

looks to the seemingly paradoxical themes of the inner Church and the initiatic society. In the

first case, the manifestos, despite their references to both Lutheranism and German nationalism,

claim that true wisdom knows no country, and advocates a religious tolerance towards Eastern

and Islamic philosophy if not their actual religious forms and structures. Yet, Faivre observes,

through the theme of the initiatic society, this attitude of a universal, mystical theology “hangs

onto the nostalgia of a form of authority.” This authority, associated with the transmission of

knowledge from master to neophyte, also has its quirks, because it is not the authority of the

unbroken ancient founding fathers, but of a fictitious character, C.R., set in the relatively recent

late 14 th century. Faivre claims that this choice is indeed in response to Casaubon’s demystifying of the Corpus Hermetica myth, and the despair of those who wanted to believe the text’s ancient origins ( Theosophy 181-183). But like Hermes Trismegistus, Christian Rosenkreutz, mythical or not, had as much influence as if he were a “real” person, as evidenced by the groups that eventually emerged. These groups either incorporated the ideals of the Rosicrucians (like the

Masons), or the Rosicrucian name itself (like the Gold-und Rosenkreutz, and later, the S.R.I.A. and the American group, the A.M.O.R.C., also known as the Ancient Mystical Order of the Rose

Cross). Accordingly, McIntosh indicates that what helped the myth survive and manifest in so many different ways is exactly its vague mystery: “a nebulous idea can be a thing of power if it is cloaked in mystery, and at the same time, presented in the form of a simple but suggestive symbolism” (138).

McIntosh further sheds light on Andreae’s seemingly conflicting positions. He speaks of

Huizinga’s notion of the “homo ludens,” the tradition of the “laughing masters” in the Buddhist tradition and the importance of humor as a tool on the path of enlightenment. In a small moment

188 of his own enlightenment, McIntosh tells us “Only later did the likely meaning occur to me.

Andreae did not mean a hoax or a practical joke, but rather an act of creative playfulness in the spirit of homo ludens. Andreae was, in a sense, a ‘laughing master,’ as were many others who have played a role in Rosicrucianism” (138). In this light, the comments by the Rosicrucians against false alchemists and charlatans in the Confessio become more intriguing. Perhaps trickery is okay, if the end goal is enlightenment and not gold for its own sake. But McIntosh has stumbled upon something here; what I would contend is one of the primary themes of occultism in the theoretical sense I have been developing. The performativity of the text itself, as well as its subsequent performative events (i.e. placards, responses, performances of visibility/invisibility, etc.), are all contingent on this notion of the trick that leads to wisdom.

Earlier, McIntosh presents us a considerable insight on the Rosicrucian forebears, the

Hermetists, who in turn were influenced by the Gnostics, who believed that the physical world of matter was created by a demiurge, an imperfect offspring of God, rather than God himself.

Unlike the Gnostics who, in extreme cases, despised the physical world in its entirety, the

Hermetists chose to study and understand matter so as to rise above it into the realm of spirit (4).

McIntosh’s later comments about this notion of the physical universe are also revealing:

The dualistic universe of the Gnostics, with its demiurge who created the physical world,

need not be gloomy and depressing. Rather it opens up the possibility of seeing the

world as a marvelous conjuring trick, with the demiurge as the conjurer, whose skill is

admired and applauded. But sooner or later the show will end and you must leave the

theatre. From this viewpoint, Gnosticism ceases to be a negative, melancholy view and

instead becomes a playful, celebratory one (138).

189 Once again, we have the theatrical metaphor in reference to esoteric tradition. As we have

seen, Frances Yates certainly thought Andreae’s influences were theatrical, and she based her

entire theory of the Rosicrucian manifestos being propaganda for the ultimately failed Bohemian

Palatinate of Frederick V on it. 8

Perhaps, as McIntosh suggests, the best way to view Andreae is as an intellectual

trickster, who quite sneakily admits to writing several anonymous texts on Rosicrucianism later

in his life. Though he stops short of admitting to playing a role in the original manifestos, he

does confess in his autobiography of 1642 to being the author of both Chemical Wedding and a work called Theca gladii spiritus , issued the same year as the allegorical novel, and sharing many of the maxims in the Confessio (Edighoffer 198). Andreae, therefore, like many others after him, understand “the paradoxical fact that occult knowledge is often transmitted through seemingly disreputable channels. A man can be at the same time a cheap charlatan and a purveyor of the greatest wisdom. In fact, it is hard to think of a great mystical teacher of recent times who did not have an element of the trickster or showman about him” (McIntosh, Ros. 139).

To summarize this performance of mystical sleight of hand, we have an academic inspired by a performance (the Elizabethan masque) to create an allegorical drama, which is adopted as the basis for a metaphysical philosophy and pseudo-political tract, which describes a fictional secret society. These documents in turn inspire further discourse, and ultimately the formation of actual groups who adapt ideas and symbolism from the original texts, applying them to their own teachings and rituals. These texts perform. They have an effect – their words do something. One

8 One of Yates’ main speculations is that the English masques so influential to Andreae’s imagery were in fact celebrations for the conferral of the chivalric and somewhat esoteric Order of the Garter on Frederick, Elector Palatine of the Rhine, by James I. She also conjectures that the marriage between Princess Elizabeth of England and Frederick was one of the inspirations for the later Chemical Wedding (33).

190 of the groups that benefits from this occult performative is Freemasonry, a movement that demonstrates many of the occult tropes and issues we are exploring in this work. Therefore, it will be helpful to briefly explore how Freemasonry adheres to the occult model.

Occult Hysteries: The Masonic Foundation

At its height, Freemasonry was seen as a way for a young man to make his way in the world. However, the strategies that groups like the Freemasons would typically employ are the most important for our purposes here. In literature produced by fraternal organizations and secret societies, several themes emerge that perfectly fit the occult model. For instance, an ancient origin myth, complete with allegorical hero, was vital. Freemasonry itself was based on an unusual apocryphal story set in the Old Testament temple of Solomon, in which an architect is murdered because he does not give up the Mason’s secret word. This password would distinguish its bearer, allowing him access to not only the work and pay of a mason, but also to some mysterious knowledge pertaining to the construction of the Temple. The passing of the

Mason’s word thus becomes an integral part of Masonic ritual. This progenitor to Freemasonry, one Hiram Abiff, then becomes an ancient model for the loyal Mason, a Hidden Master not unlike the figure of Christian Rosenkreutz for Rosicrucianism or Hermes Trismegistus for

Hermeticism. The important thing is that the origins are ancient. Steven C. Bullock reminds us that during the time of Freemasonry’s inception, the primary indicator of legitimacy in law, religion, and politics was precedent. Any venture could be legitimized by deferral to an established origin. Reference to the ancient world certainly solidified that legitimacy, since the contemporary belief was that civilization had somehow been corrupted from a more pure state of being (14).

191 In addition, Masons were motivated to create ideological precedents that justified their existence as independent free-thinking intellectuals. A Scottish born Jacobite by the name of Chevalier Andrew Michael Ramsay, while creating “Scottish Rite” masonry, theorized that ancient masons had been practicing in Scotland and were actually descended from the mysterious and suppressed chivalric order of the Knights Templar, the same group studied by the characters in Eco’s novel. The Knights, answerable only to the Pope, allegedly had discovered ancient secrets while based in Jerusalem, on the reputed site of Solomon’s temple, a mythical structure of great importance to Masonry, not only through the aforementioned origin myth, but symbolically as well. One of these secrets was apparently knowledge of the Holy Grail. The

Templars, who had amassed so much wealth in the Crusades that they effectively became the first corporate banking entity in Europe, were the central part of a political drama that ended in their prosecution and execution as heretics in France. 9 Associating with something more glamorous than stonecutters and with a group who was deemed victim of an autocratic Church and State was certainly appealing to the Freemasonry of the time. 10

Sometimes this preference for precedent would certainly reach an extreme as satirist

Ambrose Bierce would eventually note in his 1911 Devil’s Dictionary :

9 Though the Templar origins have been de-emphasized in contemporary Freemasonry, holdovers from the chivalric tradition are still very present in its ceremonies, and the Order of the Knights Templar is a level within York Rite Freemasonry reserved specifically for Christian Freemasons. However, the legend of the Templar Knights is a potent one in occult mythology and they are still constantly invoked in various occult and conspiracy theory contexts, as in Foucault’s Pendulum .

10 The Templar association also provided fodder for Freemasonry’s enemies. Anti-masons like Abbé Barruel used the myth as evidence for blaming Freemasonry for the horrors of the French Revolution as Templar revenge against the monarchy (Ridley 26). Indeed, an international conference of Masons held in 1782, so close to the French Revolution, was used as evidence by Barruel that the Masons had a hand in the Revolution. Ironically, the conference was not about planning a revolution but rather harmlessly about deciding whether the Templar affiliation should be made official (Harvey 80).

192 Freemasons, n. An order with secret rites, grotesque ceremonies and fantastic

costumes, which, originating in the reign of Charles II, among working artisans of

London, has been joined successfully by the dead of past centuries in unbroken

retrogression until now it embraces all the generations of man on the hither side of Adam

and is drumming up distinguished recruits among the pre-Creational inhabitants of Chaos

and the Formless Void. (qtd in Greer, 3)

Bierce humorously points out some of the discrepancies and tensions involved with this claim of ancient origins. Yet this yearning for origins would produce political differences within the different Masonic lodges. Bullock recounts that in colonial America, a division occurred in which a newer, upstart group referred to themselves as “the Ancients” to distinguish their groups from those they called “Moderns” who were corrupting the tenets of Freemasonry. The irony here is that the Moderns was the older group. These tensions around authenticity and authority,

Bullock notes, were in a large part due to the changing economic status of tradesman in the colonies since the Ancients were more populist and middle class than the elite Moderns (86).

Here origin competes against origin in the battle for authenticity, a struggle that secret groups face again and again in the history of occultism.

This brief examination of Freemasonry suggests several patterns important to this work.

First, Freemasonry is a paradigmatic example of how esoteric organizations transform ahistorical continuity into mythic origins. Different Masonic groups continually added to their histories, which were primarily from Biblical, apocryphal and classical sources, by incorporating the latest textual and archaeological information. Further, Ronald Hutton informs us that “the process was rarely depicted as one of discovery; rather each new generation of Masons was instructed in the latest version of the package as if it were inherited complete through an oral tradition” (57).

193 Here, Hutton reveals the textual politics involved in establishing a group outside the bounds of the prevailing society, while at the same time insulating its members within that society. As

Hutton reminds us, while Freemasonry was on the rise in the early centuries of this country, secret societies and normalizing institutions were growing increasingly similar. The need for authenticity was especially important in America, where the struggle for an origin apart from the

British Empire was a primary concern. Churches, governments and empires all employed myth and speculative history to establish sovereignty and nationalism. Secret societies like the

Freemasons followed a similar pattern, yet offered an alternative to the strict dogma and loyalty of political parties and theological sects (Bullock 165). Thus, one of the primary methods for insuring continuity and authenticity is to take to an extreme the trick already used by the prevailing institutions: manipulating history.

Secondly, the very fact that a large organization like the Masons employ initiation and secrecy is enough to create a mystique that engenders curiosity in its potential members, while fanning the flames of paranoia in those who would fear a large group with a secret agenda. In these contexts, secrecy, the act of non-speaking, consciously creates a space for potential action, whether towards violent revolution, as in the case of some of the more upstart lodges involved in the French Revolution or Irish independence, or a more subtle, philosophical one. While

Freemasonry as a general rule eschewed talk of politics and religion within its lodges, its political goals did stem from a utopian ideal already embedded in Western esotericism: the notion that humankind had indeed been expelled from Eden and was struggling to reclaim that destiny. According to this widespread belief, either adhered to in a Judeo-Christian context or in a more abstract metaphorical one, human beings had lost a more direct connection with the divine. Therefore, the great work of esotericism was to reestablish that link, through the medium

194 of sacred texts and artwork or through initiatory traditions like Freemasonry. With this goal in mind, secrecy and initiation was meant to ensure that those performing this work were indeed worthy of the task and that these elite would be able to shepherd humankind into a world where the petty sectarian squabbles of religion could be overcome in the name of a deeper Truth. This goal was ultimately part of a broader perspective on history.

David Allen Harvey, in his work on the 18 th and 19 th century French occult movement known as Martinism, discusses what he calls “methahistories,” accounts favoring epic narratives that deliver moral and philosophical messages over facts and chronology (35). More specifically,

“occult methahistories” concentrate on the hidden hand of God in the classic narratives of the

Fall and Redemption, “revealing the origins and development of the lost primordial tradition or

. . . demonstrating the action of Providence in history and revealing signs of its ultimate outcome in a near or distant future” (38). Finally, these narratives attempted to answer questions pertinent to the Enlightenment period, such as how to apply ancient wisdom to the benefit of France and the wider world. 11 Thus, a chain between the ancient and the modern had to be forged. The resulting occult genealogy, Harvey argues,

allowed the “wisdom of the ancients,” which . . . as often neither more nor less than the

hopes, fears, and ideals of contemporary authors projected onto the blank canvas of

remote prehistory, to be “recovered” and transmitted to their modern disciples. Invented

traditions allowed an idealized past, a contentious present, and a desired future to be

11 Harvey importantly notes the difference between occult projects in France, which emphasized France’s prominent place in a more universal esoteric order and those in Germany that were concerned with more particular issues like racial purity and warrior virtue. He explains this distinction through the differing national identities France and Germany had in the late 19 th century (156).

195 bound inseparably together by the chains of initiations, secret societies, and magical

symbols. (62)

Thus, in creating historical narrative, Freemasonry, just as Rosicrucianism before it, was

ultimately concerned with continuing the goals of the early modern occultists. However, they

took the extra step of applying those ideals to social and communal settings, in the form of

pedagogy and ritual.

Textual Tactics: The Legacy of Rosicrucianism

The Rosicrucian pattern of hoax texts and Freemasonry’s struggles for authenticity

among occult groups continued into late modernity, specifically with the occult explosion at the

end of the 19th century. One of the better known examples of tricky textualization in the occult

world is the story of the founding of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in 1888, which I

recounted in Chapter Two. But the story was not over when the group was established. Roughly

ten years after Westcott’s initial contact with Anna Sprengel through the mysterious cipher

manuscripts, a falling out occurred between Westcott and Mathers, who vehemently insisted that

the Sprengel letters were fake. In a letter to a fellow Golden Dawn member, actress Florence

Farr, Mathers claimed that Westcott “has NEVER been at any time either in personal or in

written communication with the Secret Chiefs of the Order, he having either himself forged or

procured to be forged the professed correspondence between him and them” (qtd. in Gilbert 30,

emphasis in original). 12 Thus, the existence of Sprengel was called into question. 13 Woodman

12 The trope of the Secret Chiefs is common to fin-de-siècle occultism, becoming popular in the early days of the Gold und Rosenkreutz in the 1760’s (McIntosh, Rose Cross 71). 19 th -century Theosophist Madame Blavatsky popularized this myth referring to the Secret Chiefs as “The Great White Brotherhood.” The Secret Chiefs were usually constructed as the members of the group with the highest degree who very rarely dally with the lower members. Over time, and with Blavatsky’s help, the Chiefs, which she called “Mahatmas,” became a sort of universal, paternal brotherhood, not unlike the early Rosicrucians, since they were often invisible. The Secret Chiefs

196 had died in 1891, and six years later, Westcott had unfortunately left some Golden Dawn material in a cab, where it found its way to the local authorities. Occult activity was undoubtedly considered unseemly for a civil servant, and Westcott was obliged to resign from the Order, though Israel Regardie claims it was because Mathers had pressured him, threatening to expose the coroner’s duplicity ( What You Should Know 14). Probably for this reason, Westcott never defended himself against the accusations of forgery. It does seem fairly convenient that Sprengel died leaving no trace except for the questionable letters, but not before she conferred authority on

Westcott. Based on evidence regarding the letters, including the fact that they were deliberately written in brown ink and old paper to give a more ancient appearance, and the fact that Westcott had a habit of making up stories and omitting necessary facts in his own autobiographical entries, most scholars writing on the topic seem to agree that the entire Sprengel affair was a hoax. 14 A later member, the macabre author Arthur Machen, was to comment on the forgery, quite appropriately: “so ingeniously was this occult fraud ‘put upon the market’ that, to the best of my belief, the flotation remains a mystery to this day. But what an entertaining mystery; and after all, it did nobody any harm” (qtd. in Gilbert 32).

What this story demonstrates is the uncanny, performative nature of occult textuality. The cipher manuscripts, as hoax texts, illuminate several important aspects of the occult text. First,

were eventually seen as either semi-divine, or even incorporeal, and claims to power were often accompanied by assertions of connections to the Secret Chiefs, as demonstrated by Mather’s allegation.

13 An article on The Golden Dawn website theorizes that the Sprengel story was a cover by Westcott and Mathers to hide their Rosicrucian membership and explain why they had these detailed documents. The article further speculates that the name Sprengel was derived from a German Masonic word “sprengelrecht,” which means territorial jurisdiction ( www.golden-dawn.org/truth_ciph1.html) .

14 As an example, Gilbert shows us a letter Westcott wrote describing himself, in which he fabricates almost his entire life, including, among other things, prominent employment as a school manager (78).

197 these texts were “discovered,” so their origins are immediately uncertain. Secondly, they are

written in code, the words themselves part of a secret and magical language. Yet this language

itself is intertextual, taken from an early modern occult text (Trithemius’ Polygraphiae) . Third,

this text, however spurious, creates an authenticity that allows a group to come into existence,

and to a certain extent, flourish. Thus, this hoax text creates something. Like a perlocutionary performative, it produces effects. Despite the fact that the original Golden Dawn was plagued by ego problems, bad publicity, and schisms, the Golden Dawn system of magical practice remains one of the most influential and pervasive in the Western world today. In other words, a text that is occult not only in message but in method and medium can lead to the formation of a practicing group, and furthermore, the creation of a mode of transmission for occult knowledge. Further, as

Machen’s quote implies, this performative text can be seen as a performance itself, as an

“entertaining mystery.” Here, we see the intricate relationship between the sacred nature of language itself and its use in magical practice, the production of the occult text and occult history, and the initiatory practices of secret societies and magical groups. We have an intimate connection between a performative discourse and an embodied practice, and between this process and performance.

In these societies, secrets, passed down through oral tradition and initiation, were paramount. Yet, ahistorical continuity ensures that secret traditions do not thrive this way in late modernity, when texts were a part of that process of secrecy. Bullock notes that Masonic historian Dewitt Clinton suggested one of early Masonry’s central functions was the preservation of secret knowledge. Yet, even he believed such activities necessary only before the invention of the printing press (268). Publication is a significant detour in the route of secrecy. Israel

Regardie claimed that when he broke his oath of secrecy to the Golden Dawn in 1936 and

198 published his multi-volume work on the Dawn, its rituals and its teachings, he was doing so not to expose them but to ensure their survival. Regardie’s decision takes the quintessential occult paradox (revelation of hidden knowledge) a bit further by making visible what was previously invisible. Aleister Crowley had actually already done as much in his Equinox of the

Gods , published for a very limited audience shortly after Crowley’s dramatic break with the

Dawn, in 1900. 15 Intriguingly, in My Rosicrucian Adventure (later republished as What You

Should Know About the Golden Dawn ), a confessional work published by Regardie in tandem with the Golden Dawn volumes, Regardie criticizes his mentor and employer for presenting

Order rituals out of context, in a fragmentary fashion, asserting “[i]t is my confirmed belief that it is practically impossible, without more precise guidance or tuition, to ascertain from the

Equinox and Crowley’s other literary productions exactly what is the actual nature of Magic as a definite practical scheme. His form of presentation, and the other contents of the Equinox , created nothing but confusion.” (25) Regardie concedes that Crowley may have intended to only tantalize those who would seek him out to obtain initiation into his Golden Dawn offshoot, the

Astrum Argentum (A ∴A∴). But Regardie’s purpose is to present Golden Dawn magic for the coherent system it was. This publication changed occultism forever, because now the rites are revealed. Before Regardie, attaining that knowledge was only possible through participation in the rites themselves and interaction with the group and its mythos. Afterwards, from the 1930s onward, occult secrets became more accessible. This was probably the first step towards the

15 Crowley himself was no stranger to occult textuality, as the main book of his Thelemic movement was The Book of the Law , a prophetic text supposedly received from Crowley’s Holy Guardian Angel, Aiwass, in 1904. This text unabashedly proclaimed Crowley the Prophet of a New Aeon and gave him permission to form the A∴A∴, essentially his own Hermetic order. Like Westcott’s dealings with Anna Sprengel that became the basis for The Golden Dawn, Crowley looked to an outside source to legitimize his pursuits. But he goes one better than Westcott by making his source actually supernatural.

199 situation at work today, where the Internet or the local bookstore provides arcane and secret

knowledge at the touch of a button.

This pattern of revealing occultism continued in the 1950s with Gerald Gardner when he

publicly revealed “secrets” about his witchcraft coven. Gardner’s textual strategies ranged from

slipping secrets into novel form, like Crowley had done with Moonchild in 1917 and Dion

Fortune had done with The Sea Priestess in 1938, to claiming to be an unbiased anthropologist in

Witchcraft Today in 1954, to ghostwriting his own biography in 1960. 16 So it is through texts hiding behind veils that the public first hears of the phenomenon of modern witchcraft.

Gardner’s personal magical diary, known as The Book of Shadows , even more fully embodies occult textuality. 17 In The Triumph of the Moon , Ronald Hutton describes Gardner’s writing process in detail, building upon Aidan Kelly’s investigation of Gardner’s papers, which revealed an earlier manuscript, strangely titled “Ye Bok of ye Art Magical.” One of the significant components of this book is its visual aesthetic. Gardner apparently removed the pages from a leather-bound book, replacing them with his own large sheets, and copying upon them major passages on ritual magic from biblical, classical, and late modern sources (including Mathers and

Crowley). Pages were often left blank to be filled at a later date. In studying Kelly’s descriptions, one gets the sense of “Ye Bok” as a processual work, developing and evolving over time. The text is packed with scripts of varying sizes and shapes and colorful decorations and

16 Gardner’s biography, simply titled Gerald Gardner: Witch , was published with the writing credit given to J.L. Bracelin. Hutton reveals that reliable sources have told him that it was actually Idries Shah, known for writings on Sufism, who actually authored the book, working from direct input from Gardner himself ( Triumph 205).

17 Though Gardner published excerpts of the book himself, Stewart and Janet Farrar attempted to produce a definitive version of the text by working backwards collating early versions of Gardner’s writing to reconstruct an ‘original’ text of 1953 (Hutton, Triumph 226). Gardner apparently lifted the title from an article in The Occult Observer (1949) about an ancient Sanskrit manual describing a type of divination based on a person’s shadow (233).

200 particular emphasis is placed on passages intended for recitation. Another element of the text worthy of note is the vastly inconsistent spelling involved, as indicated by the title. Hutton is probably right when he surmises the variant spelling, like the leather cover, is an attempt to approximate the look and feel of a medieval or early modern grimoire. Indeed, Gardner’s work seems to be a close descendant of John Dee’s digest-oriented manuscript. Hutton notes that

Gardner’s use of citation is similarly clever, in that “most are deftly removed from context to give them a connotation not obvious in the original verses; which lends an ironic humour to their designation in the contents pages as ‘Holy Writ’” (228). Also, Hutton notes several clear examples of how Gardner combined decontextualized passages from vastly different sources in order to create a significant, new piece of work, for example, a banishing chant that looks meaningless, but actually consists of fragments with a rich and varied textual history (232).

It is fairly clear, though, that “Ye Bok” was initially used as a ritual book for Gardner’s early coven, covering subjects ranging from liturgy to ritual implements, invocations to magical theory. Many researchers on Gardner raise the question whether Gardner’s manuscript proves that he was initiated into an existing religion or merely created one. On this, Hutton finds the evidence inconclusive, though he does assert that Gardner’s ritual tradition was not received as a whole, but rather cobbled together and augmented over time by Gardner himself (238). At some point, the pastiche that was “Ye Bok” ceased to be used as a ritual text, and became more of a scrapbook with hastily jotted down notes to be transferred to the more formal “Book of

Shadows.” This newer volume was not the collage of sources the manuscript was, but rather

Gardner’s initiation ceremonies and newer material pertaining to the actual witch religion he was propounding. At this point, Gardner added a preface supposedly derived from the period of the

European witch trials. This briefly written tract recommended the performing of a sort of active

201 reading, encouraging initiates to physically copy the book and add their own material, so that under duress they could claim that it was their own invention (237). So here we have Gardner perpetuating the aura of persecution that so charged the concept of witchcraft, while at the same time encouraging initiates to claim his work (or his predecessors, depending on what you believe) for their own. In a sly bit of textual sleight of hand, the implication of Gardner’s suggestion is that the best way to hide the truth and conceal the secret is to claim that the information has simply been invented, the very thing that he was himself accused of!

Once again, the laughing master has reared his bemused and enlightened head. Hutton notes Gardner’s reputation as a prankster, drawing a picture of a man “perfectly capable of the trickery, dissimulation, and plagiarism needed to pass off as an ancient survival a religion which he had developed out of various older materials.” He adds that one could either interpret

Gardner as a man channeling a divine force that had accumulated over time, or take the historian’s route, and allege “that cultural forces which had been developing for a couple of centuries combined in his emotions and ideas to produce a powerful, and extreme, response to the needs which they represented” (239-40). Either way, Gardner was obviously an inspired and inspiring man, and like John Dee, the mysterious Rosicrucians, Eliphas Lévi, and the Golden

Dawn chiefs, a magician not only in the sense of ritual practice, but in the art of textual magic.

In creating this text, Gardner was drawing from a history of magickal diaries, like John

Dee’s records of his Enochian operations and the voluminous journals of Aleister Crowley, who recommended a journal for use as a scientific log of magickal experimentation. Gardner also wants practitioners to copy his model as a method for self-examination and propagation of tradition, especially the invented kind. For Wiccans, the name “Book of Shadows” apparently

202 stuck, as it now used as the common name for any Wiccan’s magical journal. 18 Wiccan practitioner Starhawk describes the traditional “Book of Shadows” as a “recipe book” of spells and incantations, but shamefully admits that she, like most witches today, use photocopying rather than the tedious method of copying by hand. For her, the “Book of Shadows” is much more of a personal journal (Spiral Dance 68). 19 Aleister Crowley recommends the magical diary as a way to answer the question: “How did I come to be in this place at this time, engaged in this particular work?” ( Magick Without Tears , 3). For Crowley, the diary was a discovery of identity for the magician, not only to show the purpose of the magician’s current life but also to reveal the patterns of the magician’s previous lives. So the magical diary is a way of facing one’s own magical identity, through the writing itself to engage in an ancient battle, as Hélène Cixous puts it, “to deal and to receive the ax’s blow, to look straight at the face of God, which is none other than my own face, but seen naked, the face of my soul” (63). This diary, this Book of Shadows is a space where writing casts shadows of magic onto the palimpsest pages of occult memory.

We no longer meticulously hand copy secret knowledge, like Irish monks preserving even heretical texts for future transmission. But we do find some of the most useful knowledge in these personal notes, these marginalia; from John Dee’s Enochian diaries to Aleister Crowley’s

Diary of a Drug Fiend , to Phyllis Curott’s best-selling Book of Shadows (1998) and ceremonial magician Lon Milo Duquette’s clever autobiography, My Life With the Spirits (2001). Magical

18 The phrase “Book of Shadows” is also used as the title for Wiccan high-priestess and lawyer Phyllis Curott’s best-selling autobiography, and for the exploitative sequel to the hit independent feature, The Blair Witch Project .

19 Starhawk later confesses that she has not kept a consistent Book of Shadows in her years of practice, but that the beginner should do as she says, not as she does ( Spiral Dance 224).

203 autobiography is a particular genre in magical literature, and is often some of the most popular and the most revealing works on magical practice.

Gardner’s “Book of Shadows,” as an exemplary occult text, suggests the practice of magic itself is a reinvention of the trials and tribulations of experimentation. More than mere trickery, the sleight of hand is the practice itself. The hidden secret of the occult text, as

Diatollevi surmises when he speaks of the “unwritten Kabbalah” in Foucault’s Pendulum , is revealed through the process of practice. Therefore the true secret can never be fully revealed.

Thus, Gardner’s book provides us with an example of the complicated layers of occult textuality and practice. Gardner’s work was undoubtedly a confluence of magickal knowledge and practice filtered through the Golden Dawn and various Western esoteric traditions like Rosicrucianism. In his case, the text he creates comes out of ritual practice rather than the other way around. Further,

Gardner’s work has passed on what has become standards of Wiccan liturgy, including chants, prayers, gestures, and ritual structure. Finally, Gardner models for the individual practitioner how to record and perform one’s own ritual and magical work. Thus, Gardner not only created readers with his “Book of Shadows,” he also created writers and practitioners, thus ensuring the circuit of text and performance.

All these texts, from the Golden Dawn cipher manuscripts to Israel Regardie’s publications on that society and Gerald Gardner’s “Book of Shadows” take part in an occult pattern established by Rosicrucianism and its mysterious manifestos. The events surrounding the

Rosicrucian manifestos created a surviving legacy and a template for intellectual, spiritual, and political livelihood apart from mainstream institutions, while the groups the manifestos inspired in turn provided their members with necessary tools to thrive within those institutions. Esoteric teachings, interpretations of history, the use of myth and story, and as we will see, rituals, all

204 contributed to the process of transmission. Knowledge travels along these circuits from

performative discourse to embodied practice. Quite simply, occult texts inspire rituals and

teachings, as well as the organization of civic and esoteric groups who practice them, despite, or

perhaps, because these texts always seem to contain some sleight of hand, ranging from a subtle

trick to a fully developed hoax. Yet this undecidability, this playfulness attempts to contain the

possibility that de Certeau refers to when he describes the thin veil between “producing history”

and “telling stories,” which provides loopholes to the constraints of power that history creates.

This is never an easy operation. In Foucault’s Pendulum , Diatollevi cautions his

colleagues that the process of creating and reading a sacred language is an arduous one, with

potential dangers if undertaken too lightly or too quickly. In the final scene of the novel,

Casaubon awaits his fate after he witnesses Belbo’s murder at the hands of the secret society he

unwittingly created. He ruminates:

I would have liked to write down everything I thought today. But if They were to read it,

They would only derive another dark theory and spend another eternity trying to decipher

the secret message hidden behind my words. It’s impossible, They would say; he can’t

only have been making fun of us. No. Perhaps, without his realizing it, Being was

sending us a message through its oblivion.

It makes no difference whether I write or not. They will look for other meanings

even in my silence. That’s how They are. Blind to revelation. (641).

In the end, Eco seems to be punishing his heroes for manipulating texts and history. Casaubon awaits the same fate as Belbo, who dies in an elaborate ritual sacrifice in the Conservatoire des

Arts et Métiers in Paris, while Diatollevi, in the fashion of Kabbalistic justice, is dying of cancer as a result, he claims, of his body being rearranged in a matter analogous to his altering of the

205 world text. Diotallevi becomes the living example of a discursive performative (in which

saying something is connected can make it so) becoming embodied practice, since the method of

recombination takes hold of his actual body. He blames his physical suffering on a

misinvocation, a corrupt use of sacred language. The character of Diatollevi stands as a warning

to magicians who do not respect the forces they manipulate, admonishing Casaubon on his death bed: “The word of the Torah reveals itself only to him who loves it. But we approached books without love, in mockery. . . .So we attempted to do what was not allowed us, what we were not prepared for. Manipulating the words of the Book, we attempted to construct a golem” (566).

Not only, then, does the recombination of letters and texts decontextualize what a text contains; the process actually produces something. Like the Kabbalists of legend, the gentlemen of Eco’s novel have created their own golem, the mysterious group known as the Trés. This is the point where texts become magical, metaphorically and literally producing effects outside of the confines of their pages. Thus, the discursive performative works like magick, causing change to occur in conformity with will. What is spoken, incanted, and invoked takes on an embodied form. Here, Eco’s characters witness the text they create do something. Eco seems to imply that the method of correspondence applied to history, in which the magician creates links between disparate events and people, is tantamount to invoking a magical creature. Thus, Foucault’s

Pendulum presents somewhat of an allegory on the dangers of producing history by occult means. Yet, Eco cannot deny the seductive, ludic qualities of such a venture. He presents the novel’s occult group as villainous because they take the mysteries too seriously and the heroes seem to suffer because they do not take them seriously enough. Perhaps the successful occultist must balance the ludic with the sacred, with a keen awareness of the magical effect of words, stories, and histories.

206 Conclusion

While the previous chapter explored the use of symbolism and language in occult practice, this chapter has demonstrated that that symbolism and language has a context. When a candidate is flashed a symbol in an initiation rite, that symbol may help spark a gnostic experience for the initiate. Yet the power of that symbol is also derived from the fact that the symbol has a history of use within that particular group. When a Masonic candidate learns the secret handshake of the Third Degree, he knows that he is sharing in a symbolic act that has been performed for hundreds of years by other Masons. Thus, engagement with symbolism, language and ritual practice connects the candidate with the past, with a genealogy of tradition that he or she is now joining. However, as is apparent with the effect of nationalist myths and legends on the citizens of a nation, occult origin myths play significant roles in shaping the functioning of the group and in the development of the initiate. Stories about the Golden Dawn illustrate how struggles for authenticity and precedence are also paramount to the justification of occult practice, the reputation of the group, and the representation of that group to its members and potential recruits. The example of Rosicrucianism demonstrates that the origin narrative is not only crucial for understanding a group’s history, it is essential for determining the group’s role in the creation of a future society. This aspect of origin narratives plays a significant role in establishing the social politics of a group and its initiates, as we will later see in a more thorough examination of feminist witchcraft. Also, in these examples, as well as in Foucault’s Pendulum , the construction, reimagining and retelling of occult origins has a magical effect. Groups gain power through storytelling, sometimes even before they actually exist. They are magically brought into existence through manifestos, rumors, and mythic legends. Thus, the creation of text and manipulation of history is essential to the act of initiation. Furthermore, the ability of

207 occult history to transform the initiate is a primary example of the performative act of magick, the transformation of word to action, of invocation to manifestation. In the following chapter, we will discuss at length the magickal act and its context within modernity.

208

Chapter Five

“Only Theory Can Break The Spell”: Magic as Performative Power

So far, we have mentioned how language, symbol and narrative function as performative and magical acts within the initiatory space. But how can we elaborate on this amorphous concept of magic? Is magic the same as performance? At the beginning of Perform or Else , Jon

McKenzie boldly states that “performance will be to the 20 th and 21 st centuries what discipline

was to the 18 th and 19 th centuries: an onto-historical formation of power and knowledge” (18).

Demonstrating how Foucault’s formulation of the power/knowledge relation continually haunts the discourses of postmodernism and the field of performance studies, McKenzie’s claim offers us a way to approach occultism as a performance paradigm that inevitably evokes that power/knowledge dynamic. Borrowing McKenzie’s phrase, occultism is a particular “onto- historical formation of power and knowledge,” particularly within the act of initiation. In this chapter, I attempt to locate the power/knowledge dynamic in discussions of magic, particularly when the magical act stands in for the wielding of power. Much of this discussion hinges on

Enlightenment assumptions about magical power as a hidden, nefarious force, wielded by those few in power who have the ability to manipulate the masses with their deft sleight of hand.

During the Enlightenment period, this notion of occult secret societies providing refuge for the powerful elite was a very real one, as groups like the Illuminati and the Freemasons loomed large in genteel society and even larger in the popular imagination. In discussions of the

Enlightenment by twentieth-century philosophy, particularly the Frankfurt School, the occult figure of the magician becomes an allegorical figure of authority and the magic he employs is a symbol for hidden political power. However, contemporary magickal practitioners constantly

209 reformulate the concept of magic, especially, as we will later see, in the realm of initiation,

ultimately transforming magical power into a potential resistance to hegemonic power.

In this chapter, I examine some of the ways in which both scholars and practitioners

engage the concept of magical power. This engagement is vital in approaching magic as

understood and practiced by magickal practitioners, as well as magic’s discursive field. As the

act of initiation is understood by practitioners to be a magical transformation, it is essential to

understand what practitioners mean by magic in order to grasp what actually happens during an

initiation rite. Definitions of magic by both practitioners and scholars tend to overlap as

practitioners incorporate anthropological and cultural theory and scholars respond to

practitioners’ views of their own practice. I begin with a practitioner’s approach to magic, based

on my own training and experience, as well as practitioners’ perspectives from practical texts

and other ethnographies. Next, I focus on two ways that magic functions in discourse. In the first

case, I examine the influence of Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough, taking into account

Michael Taussig’s more recent critique of sympathetic magic as an Enlightenment construct caught up in issues of colonialism. Taussig’s conclusions about magic indicate the occult leanings not only of Enlightenment critique but also in theory-making itself. Secondly, keeping in mind Max Weber’s famous statement about the “disenchantment of the world,” I further explore Aleister Crowley’s definition of magick and his promotion of occultism despite his insistence on Enlightenment ideals about rationalism and science. Crowley himself is the ultimate magician figure who provoked much antipathy from fellow magicians, the media and mainstream society while alive. Yet Crowley and his published work have influenced countless magickal practitioners, even those who claim to have very little liking for his character. Building

210 on Crowley’s definition and its implications, I discuss magic as a metaphor for rhetorical

and, ultimately, performative power.

“Magick is Afoot” 1

Practitioners often categorize magick as “practical” or “ceremonial.” Paganism, with its emphasis on the practical, and the more Golden Dawn-oriented practice of ceremonial magick are the most popular trends of magickal practice today, as evidenced by the wide array of trade books published on these topics. In discussing the distinction between these two trends, many practitioners and even ethnographers still use the terms “high magic” and “low magic.” In describing the supposed difference between the two, Hutton characterizes magic in the medieval and early modern eras as being merely for practical purposes and specific ends, or as he quips

“an elaborate way of ringing for room service” (82). For instance, a magician might perform a ceremony to bind a demon for a specific task like finding a thief. 2 According to Hutton, this began to change with Lévi, and subsequently, Mathers and the other Golden Dawn members, who combined this more scholarly magic with a mystical tradition gleaned from the Hermetic texts and Kabbalah. This tradition specifically focused on the spiritual development of the individual, in the hopes that the individual could achieve a union with God, and, according to

Hutton, particularly reflected the Enlightenment ideals of progress and individual achievement

1 From a popular Pagan chant, “Goddess is Alive and Magick is Afoot.” This simple little chant has quite a countercultural pedigree, as it was adapted from the 1969 song “God Is Alive” by protest singer Buffy Sainte-Marie, which was in turn a musical transcription of a poem in Leonard Cohen’s 1966 experimental novel, Beautiful Losers .

2 Magicians often defended acts like demon binding (forcing the demon to enact your will) on the grounds that it was acceptable to do so if you were doing God’s work, as in the case of the biblical Solomon who enslaved demons to build the Temple of Jerusalem. This story was part of a Biblical oral tradition that was recorded in the Greek text, The Testament of Solomon , another text with disputable origins. Though parts of the text date from the 4th century C.E., the extant manuscript dates from the 15 th to 17 th century (Harding and Alexander, par.2). Whatever the origin, it is clear that the text was used as a reference for medieval and early modern magicians. The story is available in M.R. James, Old Testament Legends (Longmans, Green and Co., 1913).

211 that were so popular in the nineteenth century. Lévi gave the term “high magic” (haute magie) to this blend of magic and mysticism (82). Currently, practitioners use this term to denote those practices of ceremonial magick commonly associated with the Golden Dawn, like

Kabbalistic prayers and gestures or the use of the Tree of Life glyph. Contemporary uses of the term most often involve the distinction between Golden Dawn-style practice and Wicca or witchcraft (Hutton 93). The goal of these practices is nothing short of the spiritual evolution of the practitioner, who attempts to link with divine forces by evoking those forces within the individual.

Like many other practitioners of ceremonial magick, I was introduced to these concepts through the various works of Israel Regardie, the most prolific representation of the Golden

Dawn in 20 th -century America. In addition to Regardie’s specific works on the Golden Dawn, his theoretical texts, particularly The Tree of Life , A Garden of Pomegranates , and The Middle

Pillar , form the popular basis for the practice of ceremonial magick. Contemporary practical texts from the popular occult press, Llewellyn Publications, are thoroughly indebted to

Regardie’s works. One of the most significant of these is Donald Michael Kraig’s Modern

Magick: Eleven Lessons in the High Magickal Arts , a basic training manual for beginning magicians. In plain language, Kraig introduces readers to Kabbalistic philosophy, as well as particular meditations, prayers, and practices, such as the creation of talismans and magical

“tools.” These talismans involve words, figures, and colors meant to embody a particular intent on the part of the magician, while the tools often represent some sort of particular force (for instance, the elemental tools that represent the four primary elements used in magical practice: a dagger for air, chalice for water, wand for fire, and pentacle, a five-pointed star in a disk, for

212 earth). 3 Ceremonial magick, then, engages the consciousness of the magician through the use and manipulation of the systems of correspondences as established by the accretion of traditions reaching back to the medieval era and, in some cases, to the classical era. Yet, the end goal is generally for the magician to achieve a more evolved spiritual self.

The goals of low magic, however, are a bit more concrete. Low magic, sometimes called practical magic, is supposedly based more on folk traditions that might involve a love or prosperity spell, for instance. If the spellcaster wanted money, she would cast a circle, to establish a boundary for both protection and containment, and would then ask a deity particularly suited to the task for help. For example, matters of prosperity might be appropriate to the Roman god Mercury. This “asking,” though, would consist of more than just prayer; often, some sort of object would be constructed that would represent the desire for money or the perceived goal of receiving that money. One of the most common and simple techniques would be to bless a candle with an essential oil associated with prosperity and simply burn the candle. The candle would most likely be green, the color that most Americans associate with money and prosperity.

These associations might not follow medieval forms of correspondence as closely and strictly as ceremonial magick, but the idea of correspondence is still in effect. 4 Whatever association the practitioner uses, she endows a candle with her desire and burns it (she might say something like

“as this candle burns, so does my poverty decrease”).

3 In my early training, I made these tools according to Kraig’s specifications and followed his recommended regimen of meditation, energy work, and prayer. Other texts followed after, along with a set of Tarot cards I purchased for meditation and divination, as well as the usual supplies of candles and incense.

4 Practitioners often encourage this approach when using correspondences for practical work, as when Raven Kaldera and Tannin Schwartzstein, in their practical manual Urban Primitive: Paganism in the Concrete Jungle , recommend asking the questions “What does this color feel like to you? This texture? This scent? This word?--and adjust appropriately” (13). This make-do approach applies most particularly to the subject of Kuldera and Schwartzstein’s book, the urban magician, who might create magical tools out of mundane objects, like paper clips, sidewalk chalk, keys, and a cigarette lighter (26).

213 This basic method of “candle magick” tends to take on the form of a stated desire for

something tangible, like a job or a home, but may also be more abstract, as in a desire for

strength to overcome an addiction. Practitioners often embody these desires in object form, like a

piece of paper, a candle, or some physical talisman. For example, the Hermetic Order tended to

have participants express their wishes for the new year on Yule ornaments that they would hang

on a tree like Christmas decorations. Similarly, on Spring Equinox, participants would design

and color an egg that would express what “seeds” they wished to “plant” for the year. 5 I was taught that the symbol was ultimately unimportant – it only served as a focusing device for my consciousness. Whatever action or object you utilize, the most important aspect of the magic was the intent. The practitioner needed to state clearly the intent of the working as he or she is performing the function. Any atmosphere, which might include chants, robes, incense, and the casting of the circle itself, would act as a method to focus that intent and as my fellow practitioners would say, “send your desires out to the universe.” As this language indicates, practical magic tends to be a more generic form of practice that can be adapted specifically to

Pagan traditions, or it can operate in a broader, “New Age” spiritual context.

I was also frequently lectured on the old adage, “be careful what you wish for,” as my teachers regaled me with stories about the consequences of being too specific or not specific enough about the stated intent. Similarly, I was also warned about the ethics of performing magic for or on people who did not wish it. This concept was introduced to me in a Wiccan context, both as the maxim “If it harm none, do what thou wilt,” a version of Gardner’s Wiccan rede, and

5 These acts would often take the form of whatever the prevailing metaphor of that season would be. Both Spring and Fall Equinox often would be associated with an agricultural metaphor, with spring for planting and fall for harvesting.

214 the Threefold Law, the notion that whatever action you perform, the consequences (for good

or ill) would return to you three times. As we will see, these two guidelines play an important

role in the debates about ethics and politics in the community of magical practitioners. However,

as I developed further in this practice, I began to realize that whether or not I actually believed in

the intervention of various deities in my plight, that the act of performing the ritual served as a

method of bringing desires to awareness, thus helping me to focus on achieving the particular

goal. 6 Practical texts often advise the reader that ritual is only part of the work: for instance, if one is performing a ritual to find employment, one actually has to apply for jobs. Thus, the

“magic” in “practical magic” mostly involves the practitioner intensely focusing on a goal. This is by no means supernatural--sparks do not fly from wands, objects do not float, spirits do not speak. Fantasy literature and television certainly have little in common with the actual workings of magical ritual. Of course, this does not discount the countless stories of otherworldly phenomena that others have experienced and told me. My experience just does not include these things (well, at least most of the time).

In my research, I have noticed that British authors tend to preserve the distinction between low and high magic more clearly, whereas my experiences practicing in the U.S. midwest have demonstrated a far more fluid relation between the two. Susan Greenwood in particular marks the many differences between her involvement with a ceremonial magick group and a feminist witchcraft group. In exploring the differences between the two, Greenwood claims that their main distinction stems from their opposing cosmologies: ceremonial magic is dualistic, since the practitioner attempts to “reconnect” with the divine, overcoming a “gnostic Fall from

6 In some cases, I was told to put away the talisman and forget about it, in order to keep your conscious mind from interfering with the magic. Therefore, this magical action works on a subconscious level.

215 divinity,” whereas witchcraft is monistic, since individuals are already a part of the divine, so

there is no Fall. In this worldview, the entire cosmos, especially the natural world, is divine

(Magic 116). However, in practice, this distinction may not be entirely accurate for several reasons.

First, these distinctions assume that practitioners always treat ceremonial magick and witchcraft as religions with religious cosmologies, which they do not. Within the Pagan community, debates over whether witchcraft is a religion or a practice have raged for years with no signs of abatement. Secondly, practitioners often distinguish between Wicca and witchcraft.

Some claim that Wicca refers to a “magico-mystical religion within western esotericism”

(Salomonsen 135) as opposed to witchcraft, a term that connotes a magical and spiritual practice, but not a religion (Salomonsen 61). 7 In addition, while assumptions about class distinctions are inherent to these notions of high and low magick—that is, the educated elite practiced high magick, while the uneducated peasant masses performed low magick—the boundaries between those who supposedly practiced high or low magick were surprisingly fluid. 8 Furthermore, while witchcraft may not subscribe to a Fall narrative in their cosmology, they do not necessarily escape the narrative altogether. For instance, one of the foundational myths of Wicca, as demonstrated by Starhawk’s Truth Or Dare , is a story of a peaceful, matriarchal, goddess-

worshipping society that, at some point, was destroyed by foreign patriarchal warrior societies.

7 See also Greenwood ( Magic 109).

8 In practice, ceremonial magicians were not above using love spells and the like, and folk magicians from the lower classes often got their hands on and used “high magic” grimoires, even if they were not educated enough to understand all of the information. Ronald Hutton mentions that those who accused cunning folk of witchcraft often pointed to the books these practitioners owned as evidence. Reading itself was suspect. Thus distinctions between high and low magic were often meaningless ( Triumph 93). Sabina Magliocco similarly argues “in practice these two categories existed as opposite ends of a continuum that contained a large body of magical knowledge and practice and was known to some individuals in all social classes” ( Witching Culture 30).

216 Wiccans, even those who may not subscribe to the historical accuracy of such a story, often

engage the notion that they are rediscovering or reclaiming knowledge and experience that

patriarchy, Christianity, or simply human ignorance lost or destroyed. So the stories may be

different, but a post-lapsarian narrative is certainly present in Pagan beliefs and practices.

Besides the class assumptions, many other stereotypes in this high/low binary abound,

such as the notion that ceremonial magicians are more hierarchical, tradition-bound, detail-

oriented, monotheistic, and male, whereas practitioners of low magic are witches, more

consensus-oriented, improvisational, polytheistic, and female. In my experience, neither of these

stereotypes is correct, though they do exist as extremes. The Hermetic Order of Chicago

attempted to meld these two sides together into a Golden Dawn-style degree system with both a

Hermetic philosophy and a strikingly Pagan approach to ritual, festival and sacred space. 9 This was not without its problems, perhaps because of a conflicting desire to both preserve traditional forms and allow for innovation in both ritual practice and political structure. However, many practical witchcraft texts include the basics of Kabbalah, like the Tree of Life glyph. In quite a few cases, practitioners are aware of and are even experienced in both ceremonial magick and

Paganism, but choose to emphasize one or the other depending on the situation or where their interests lay at the time. Even where there are major differences between ceremonial magicians and Pagans, I have noticed that, in most cases, they tend to consider themselves part of the same social circles. At the large festivals, for instance, one can find a broad continuum of practitioners in attendance, including Pagans and ceremonial magicians, but also practitioners of Afro-

9 In one instance, the leaders of the Hermetic Order and stewards of their private land installed an elaborate “Tree of Life” garden that combined the traditional Kabbalistic glyph with herbal correspondences and images of Pagan deity.

217 Caribbean religions like Ifa or voodoo, druids, asatru (practitioners of a particular Norse paganism), and practitioners of Native American faiths, among others.

In order to understand how these practitioners define magic, we must also consider another distinction in the actual practice of magic. Practitioners often say, “magic is all around,” while others tend to limit the term to the acts that they perform within a strictly bound ritual space. Some limit it even further to acts of practical magic such as our example of candle magick. In contrast, many practitioners consider everything they do in ritual space to be magic, from establishing the space by “casting the circle” to invoking various spirits and deities. Still others acknowledge a less structured and ritualized kind of magic often vaguely referred to as

“raising energy.” Singing, drumming, dancing, or even just generally being in community around a fire might raise energy. In fact, within the extended community of the Hermetic Order, a division began to develop between those who preferred the more traditional iconography, liturgy and structure of ritual and those who preferred the more improvisational, free-flowing, openness of community fires. In our community, this division often fell along lines of age and experience, since the older members aligned themselves more with the practices they had been taught, while the younger members, who had not benefited from extensive training programs, tended to have less patience with these older forms. I suspect that the Hermetic Order community was not alone in this division, as I have seen evidence of it at various festivals, though I myself have preferred one style over another at different points in my development.

One of Susan Greenwood’s informants, Ken Rees, clearly distinguishes between magic that happens inside and outside of “clearly demarcated sacred space.” While he sees the latter as merely serendipitous or even random, he privileges the former as an act done with the intention of the operator. Greenwood concludes, “magic cannot be performed properly without the

218 conscious focusing of the magician’s will” (41). This sense of magic consisting of a performer and a performance tends to invoke two different but related definitions of magic. The first is usually a variation on Aleister Crowley’s formulation of magic: “the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with will” ( Magick xiii). Secondly, on a more practical level, practitioners might discuss spells or “workings,” acts practitioners perform within a ritual context that are intended to have specific effects and work through basic magical laws, such as

“like attracts like.” This notion of practical magic is basically a retread of James Frazer’s classic definitions of sympathetic and contagious magic in The Golden Bough , the multi-volume work of early anthropology published in 1900. However, unlike James Frazer’s definitions of sympathetic and contagious magic, which focus on the logic behind the method, Crowley emphasizes the intentional agent, the person doing the magic, rather than on the magical act itself. In Crowley’s formulation, the role of the individual’s will in the practice of magic is a crucial part of the discourse of magic itself. In my experience, through training and reading, I have noted that practitioners most often formulate their definitions of magic in response to both

Frazer’s and Crowley’s definitions. Practitioners tend to cite Frazer’s definitions when they want to talk about method and ritual context, whereas they refer to Crowley’s when dealing with intentionality and agency.

Both these influential formulations of magic stem from the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. Crowley and Frazer were roughly contemporaries; in 1898, while Frazer was in the midst of revising new editions of The Golden Bough , Crowley was busy solidifying his notorious reputation as an upstart initiate in the Golden Dawn. After a dramatic dispute with the older members, Crowley wasted no time forming his own group and his own philosophy, considering his former Golden Dawn colleagues as mere amateurs. His long career was fodder

219 for countless lurid stories and accusations, some of which were true, and he was often misunderstood as being merely a demented black magician or even a Satanist, because of his tendency to associate himself with “The Great Beast” of Revelations and sign his correspondence

666. 10 And while we have no evidence that Frazer was aware of Crowley as such, we do know that as a rationalist, he was apparently aware of and appalled at the appropriation of his work by

Spiritualists (Styers 31). Crowley, on the other hand, was certainly aware of Frazer’s work as he endorsed it as an “invaluable” text (Hutton 172). 11 The use of Frazer’s theories by non-academic practitioners has certainly continued. In fact, my earliest magical teachers presented The Golden

Bough to me as a primary reference for magical theory and European ritual traditions. My first teacher even referred to it as a “cookbook.” Indeed, beginning magic curricula often include watered down versions of Frazer’s theories. 12 Frazer’s work is a primary example of the previously mentioned ethnographic feedback loop, in which scholarly work on magic, even when deeply flawed, may be consumed by practitioners who then directly integrate their readings into their practice. A similar process occurred when early Wiccans integrated Margaret Murray’s erroneous work on witchcraft into their own historical narrative. As Randall Styers puts it, “the scholarly effort to reify and contain magic has regularly had the inadvertent effect of making

10 Several biographies of Crowley have appeared over the years, some of them little more than tabloid exposés. The most well known include John Symonds’ The Great Beast (1951), written with Crowley’s permission, C.R.Cammell’s The Black Magician (1951), Israel Regardie’s The Eye in the Triangle (1970), written from Regardie’s perspective as Crowley’s student and personal secretary, Colin Wilson’s Nature of the Beast (1987), and more recently, Roger Hutchinson’s The Beast Demystified (1998), Lawrence Sutin’s Do What Thou Wilt: A Life of Aleister Crowley (2002) and Richard Kaczynski’s Perdurabo: The Life of Aleister Crowley (2002). Crowley himself wrote his Confessions (1969) with the help of Symonds and Kenneth Grant, a magician with the O.T.O., an organization Crowley headed up at one time. Interestingly, Crowley called this rambling treatise an “autohagiography.”

11 Hutton points to Crowley referencing Frazer in his Liber 777 and in his diaries ( Magical Record 217, 309).

12 Many introductory texts use this type of example to illustrate the concept of sympathetic magic, particularly Kraig (305).

220 more magic” (18). Therefore, scholarly works like Frazer’s Golden Bough play a complex, multivalent role in the developing attitudes towards magic and ritual tradition.

Though Frazer and Crowley are by no means the only sources from whom contemporary magickal practice draws, both these approaches to magic also make possible a critical exploration of magic as a useful metaphor for ritually performing and speaking performatively.

How these two processes interact reveals much about how magic functions in both the scholarly and the practical realm. Therefore, we will first examine Frazer’s theories of magic within their historical and discursive context and then apply Crowley’s definition of magic to theories of performance.

“Particulate Sensuosity”: Sympathetic Magic and Mimesis

Out of the vast discourse around magic in the last century, one may well wonder why the theories of a crusty Victorian skeptic have continued to hold sway on practitioners that Frazer himself would have thoroughly derided? One factor is certainly Frazer’s fastidious detail of folk magic practices--the “cookbook” aspect. Another is the richly elaborate mythology contained in the volumes of the Bough , complete with harvest rituals and sacrificed grain kings that would

inspire the festival calendar, mythos, and imagination of the Wiccan movement and 20 th -century

Pagan practitioners. But perhaps it is the simplicity of Frazer’s magical theory that is attractive to

beginning practitioners. His definitions of magic are inherently predicated on the notion that

humans can somehow compel, coerce, or even control supernatural forces by symbolic gestures

and the force of will. Early in the first volume of his work, Frazer establishes the basics of his

magical theory.

221 Analysis shows that magic rests everywhere on two fundamental principles: first, that

like produces like , effect resembling cause; second that things which have once been in

contact continue ever afterwards to act on each other . The former principle may be

called the Law of Similarity; the latter, that of Contact or Contagion. From the one the

magician infers that he can produce any effect he desires merely by imitating it in

advance; from the other, that whatever he does to a material object will automatically

affect the person with whom it has once been in contact. Practices based on the Law of

Similarity may be termed Homeopathic Magic; those based on the Law of Contact or

Contagion, Contagious Magic. (35, emphasis in original)

When these concepts were explained to me, I was offered the classic example of the voodoo doll.

In order to act upon a person, a magician would shape a figure that resembles the subject

(similarity) and would often attach something that belonged to the subject, like a piece of clothing, a strand of hair, or a signature (contagion). I was also reassured that this operation could be used to heal as well as harm. Despite the Hollywood horror movie quality of this example, it serves quite well to demonstrate Frazer’s laws.

Though the original text of the Bough was published in 1890, it took twenty years or so before the massive twelve-volume book began to take hold of the popular imagination. By that time the burgeoning anthropological community was rejecting both Frazer’s conclusions, which were originally heavily critical of Christianity, and his methods, which consisted of compiling information sent to him by students and independent ethnographers. The results of most of this work were strongly tainted by the typical assumptions of Victorian anthropology, mainly that non-Western practitioners could not be relied upon to provide explanations and evidence for their own rituals and customs and that it was up to the researchers to reconstruct the rituals’

222 “real” significance. In fact, Hutton notes, Frazer often ignored indigenous explanations altogether (127).

Yet, Frazer was only the most vocal member of a growing movement among folklorists, dubbed the “myth and ritual” school, despite the rejection of their ideas within the academy.

These folklorists, including Frazer and fellow anthropologist Sir Edward Tylor, treated folk customs as “cultural fossils” that could provide evidence for a general theory of humanity’s religious evolution. Therefore, these researchers worked on the assumption that rural tradition was always better and more “pure” than similar developments in cities and towns and that these traditions were relatively unbroken and timeless practices representing an especially romantic pagan past. In Hutton’s seventh chapter, “Finding A Folklore,” he explores the particularly

British and German idealization of rural life and how this obsession with the countryside, as both an escape from the dreary industrial city and a romantic backlash against rationalism, provided the necessary ingredients for the popularity of Frazer’s work outside the academy (117). Hutton also notes the irony that both Frazer and Tylor’s inherent subtext was a criticism of Christianity and religion in general as backwards and primitive and merely steps along the way toward the enlightened rationality of humanity (114). 13

Early anthropology saw the practices Frazer described as the products of false logic, mistaking an ideal connection for a real one. Tylor, bringing together the Hermetic notion of correspondence with an anthropological approach, claims, “the principal key to understanding

Occult Science is to consider it as based on the Association of Ideas, a faculty which lies at the very foundation of human reason” (qtd. in Taussig, Mimesis 48-9). However, Tylor saw the

13 Frazer’s association of Christ with ancient European vegetation gods who are sacrificed provides Hutton with the primary fuel for this assertion (115).

223 practice of magic in the “primitive” world as a reversal of true logic, in which facts and things would beget thoughts and images. So it is not the concept of analogy itself that is in question, but rather the direction of flow between connections that Tylor called into question. 14

Given that Frazer did often reject indigenous explanations for practices, we can also see a particularly Victorian rationalist bias similar to Tylor’s:

Both [magical laws] derive, in the final analysis, from a false conception of natural law.

The primitive magician, however, never analyzes the mental assumptions on which his

performance is based, never reflects on the abstract principles involved. With him, as

with the vast majority of men, logic is implicit, not explicit; he knows magic only as a

practical thing, and to him it is always an art, never a science, the very idea of science

being foreign to his thinking. (Frazer 35)

So here we have the primitive magician, never questioning the assumptions that drive his practice. Rather, he acts on instinct and the unconscious. He is a character quite at home in early anthropology, a true colonial construction of the irrational, superstitious primitive, who serves as a perfect foil for the rational, enlightened, Western individual. This viewpoint was quite common among nineteenth-century European intellectuals, who regarded magic as “a symptom of psychological impairment and marker of racial or cultural inferiority” (Styers 27). Of course, this critique of magic was one of the defining aspects of colonialism, justifying the mission to bring enlightened cultural values and beliefs to so-called primitive peoples who were deemed

14 Here, Michael Taussig reminds us of Stanley Tambiah’s strong attempt to “demonstrate with enviable skill the considerable scientific power of just such analogical reason in which the magic of similarity was involved” (Mimesis 49). In other words, Tambiah defends the flow of correspondence from image to fact, rather than the reverse, which is what Tylor argues is the correct, logical one.

224 incapable of self-government (Styers 14). Yet this was just one way that critiques of magic were deployed to serve various Western agendas.

Indeed, magic remains one of the most convoluted and confused discourses associated with modernity. Even though 19 th - and 20 th -century magickal occult movements tended to reflect the desires and drives of modernity, as Alex Owen has claimed, Randall Styers argues that the mainstream of modernist thought chiefly defined itself in contrast to notions of non-rational, primitive superstition most commonly associated with magic. In Making Magic: Religion, Magic and Science in the Modern World , Styers outlines a history of how modernist scholarship constructs magic as an amorphous twilight zone between religion and science, intended, in some cases, “to mediate--even police--relations between the two,” while generally serving as something against which proper religious or rational thought can be defined (6). He charts this process from Christianity’s condemnation of magic as sinful and demonic through the European witch trials and the Inquisition to the vilification of magic as irrational and fetishistic in the work of Hegel, Comte, Feurbach and others. Early anthropology, much of which was dedicated to researching and categorizing magical rituals performed by so-called “primitive” societies, often seemed to support a colonialist agenda that saw magical practitioners as regressive. From the speculative and theoretical work of Frazer and Tylor in the late nineteenth century to the ethnographic work of Malinowski, Hubert and Mauss, and Evans-Pritchard in the early to mid- twentieth century, and later Lévi-Strauss’s formation of structuralism, anthropologists have tended to focus on distinctions between magic, religion and science within the societies they studied. For instance, Evans-Pritchard saw magic as rational, but not up to the standards of

European thought. Others, like Marcel Mauss, emphasized the importance of magical ritual to

225 the social identity of the community, while more recently, Stanley Tambiah and others have focused on the symbolic aspects of magical ritual. 15

Both those who wished to promote religion and those who wished to valorize rationalism and science used the discourse on magic to further their agendas. In the modernist narrative of progress, magic was usually seen as an early evolutionary pre-cursor to religion and then science, the pinnacle of rational knowledge. From the perspective of those who advocated religion as a useful social tool, like Robertson Smith and Émile Durkheim, the mere notion that practitioners thought their magic capable of propitiating or even controlling divine and natural forces was quite disturbing. These theorists interpreted magic as a strange, malicious power that kept primitive peoples in check through fear and submission. According to Styers, this demonization of magic allowed religionists to carve out a positive social role for religion in a post-

Enlightenment atmosphere that often accused religion of having the same magical power to control its followers (91). Thus, a long-standing attitude towards magic as a tool for control and domination began to prevail.

In outlining the modernist critique of magic, Styers presents a dizzying array of views on magic that, despite their differences, mostly agree that magic is somehow a threat to the social order. For instance, he highlights the apparently contradictory nature of Mauss and Hubert’s formulation of magic:

. . . [W]hen speaking about religion, Mauss and Hubert argue that magic stands in

fundamental opposition to the interests of the collective. It is fundamentally antireligious

15 This is an extremely partial list of anthropologists who have dealt with magic and ritual and does not take into account distinctions between differing schools of thought, such as functionalism and structuralism. For a more thorough discussion of these, see Catherine Bell’s Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions .

226 and unauthorized, taking place outside of organized social cults. In relation to

science, however, magic is portrayed as too much in the thrall of the collective. Rational

scientific innovation can occur only when the individual breaks free from the group

sentiment. The problem with magic would seem not to be its general individualism but

rather specific forms of antisocial individualism. (132)

On the one hand, magical practitioners are too individualistic and antisocial, while, on the other, they are also too susceptible to manipulation and group superstition. Because it is both potentially subversive and irrational, magic is seen as a phenomenon inferior to both religion and science. Accordingly, Styers critiques a tendency in religious discourse on magic to create a binary distinction between “self-serving” magic directed towards worldly ends and “appropriate religion” that engenders more spiritual pursuits like communion with the Divine. According to

Styers, this binary between the transcendent and the mundane eventually breaks down, as even

“the most lofty purposes eventually offer a pragmatic payoff” and that this distinction is based on

“a strikingly narrow view of the objectives of religion” (103). At the same time, Styers points out a popular view among religionists that magic is dangerous because it promotes self-interest and a rebellious relationship with spiritual powers, while “appropriate religion is marked by a pious submission to those powers” (105). Once again, the magician is dangerous, because he does not submit to genteel and “civilized” religion but rather carves out his own space through nefarious activities. Therefore, a major trope in the discourse around magic involves the troubled relation between the magician and his community. From the perspective of Enlightenment thought, magic is dangerous because it both encourages antisocial behavior and self-interest, while it leaves the “primitive” mind vulnerable to manipulation and control. For some theorists, like

Tylor, this fear extended to various marginalized groups in Western society (women, people of

227 color, the lower class) who may have strong proclivities for magic, which “incites antisocial

appetites and subversive passions among the dispossessed and thus places good order at risk”

(17).

Furthermore, this anti-magical bias extends beyond Enlightenment thinking and into

critiques of the Enlightenment itself, particularly in the work of Theodor Adorno and Max

Horkheimer, the Frankfurt School philosophers who, in 1944, authored the classic work of

critical theory, Dialectic of Enlightenment . Adorno and Horkheimer significantly expand the definition of “magician,” questioning the notion that modernity has indeed moved away from magic and superstition and arguing that technology, capitalism and popular culture are the new magic. Utilizing the oft-noted connection between power and knowledge, they locate Weber’s disenchantment within a process of intellectual evolution from animism and polytheism, to a monadic philosophy and theology, the development of an absolute Idea. Yet, Horkheimer and

Adorno's main claim in the early sections of the book consists of identifying the magical and occult within the supposedly rational Enlightenment philosophy that

recognized the old powers in the Platonic and Aristotelian aspects of metaphysics, and

opposed as superstition the claim that truth is predicable of universals. It asserted that in

the authority of universal concepts, there was still discernible fear of the demonic spirits

which men sought to portray in magic rituals, hoping thus to influence nature. From now

on, matter would at last be mastered without any illusion of ruling or inherent powers, of

hidden qualities. For the Enlightenment, whatever does not conform to the rule of

computation and utility is suspect . . . . Every spiritual resistance it encounters serves

merely to increase its strength. Which means that enlightenment still recognizes itself

even in myths. (6)

228 Here, the authors present magical ritual, especially the kind of demon invocation that interested medieval magicians, as a regressive demonstration of power. Enlightenment philosophy was supposed to work against the notion of hidden, occult qualities behind power.

However, according to Horkheimer and Adorno, the Enlightenment itself reproduces that occultism in a different form, in which universalist philosophy is a totalizing myth with the same kind of seductive magical pull as the ancient rituals. The Frankfurt philosophers dramatize that particular brand of occultism by utilizing the narrative of magic throughout their text, where magicians, shamans, and storytellers battle against the forces of rationality, science and logic, and the sides are ever changing. Within this battle, a certain kind of occult discourse emerges, in which “magic” is understood as a metaphor for rhetorical and performative power. In Adorno and Horkheimer’s formulation, that power may become dangerously fascist. However, later scholars and practitioners have offered the possibility that rhetorical and performative magic may function socially and politically as part of a resistant practice.

In the case of Michael Taussig’s work, this resistance may be possible even within a colonial setting. In his fascinating Mimesis and Alterity , Taussig further explores the connection between the so-called primitive and the Western rationalist by attempting to unpack Frazer’s sympathetic magic. For him, Frazer’s sympathy is equivalent to the notion of mimesis, in which the copy partakes in the power of the original, the process of representation itself. Here, my earlier example of the voodoo doll conjures the proper blend of primitivism and Hollywood aesthetic that both Taussig and Walter Benjamin, who Taussig continually invokes, would appreciate. 16 In this case, the copy has power over the original, by means of imitation (sympathy)

16 Taussig’s model for exploring sympathetic magick is Benjamin’s oft-quoted “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” in which Benjamin claims “Every day the urge grows stronger to get hold of an object at very close range by way of its likeness, its reproduction” (qtd. in Mimesis 20).

229 and by having a part of the original, like clothing or hair (contact). Despite Frazer’s

contentions that magic was a faulty model, based on irrational reasoning and a lack of

understanding of how the world works, Taussig takes Frazer’s magical theories at face value.

Sympathetic magic is a framing device throughout Taussig’s text, for everything from the act of

citation within his own text, to the legal process, from Marx’s commodity fetishism to the

relationship between the colonizer and the colonized. Through various examples and textual

analysis, Taussig shows us that despite its primitivism, sympathetic magic still holds sway in

rational, Enlightenment times (Mimesis 17).

First, Taussig mentions the magic of citation. Through mimesis, he wishes to question the

very nature of representation itself, to look at the magical power of representational media to lift

and transport the imagination. He asks, “[c]an’t we say that to give an example, to instantiate, to

be concrete , are all examples of the magic of mimesis wherein the replication, the copy, acquires the power of the represented?” ( Mimesis 16, emphasis in original). Here, Taussig reminds us of the invocatory process of citation itself, additionally demonstrated by the fact that I am also participating in a magical chain of invocations: I invoke Taussig, who in turn invokes Frazer,

Benjamin, Horkheimer, and Adorno. Even more significantly, Taussig implies what Aleister

Crowley states specifically in Magick in Theory and Practice , that the act of writing, of citation, of publication and distribution, are all magical acts, because of the sympathetic ability of repeated words to carry the power of the original (xiii). This repetition creates “new forms through doubling mimetic doubling” ( Mimesis 109). Accordingly, Taussig mentions Benjamin’s

“addiction” to quoting, while he himself is fond of repeating himself incessantly. Taussig’s definition of mimesis as nature that creates second nature becomes his own mantra and magical

230 formula. Thus, Taussig very consciously participates in the magical formula of citation and

repetition in order to make his claims.

Further, Taussig expands on the notion of citation to include other instances of

synecdoche, where a part stands in for the whole. For example, he tells us about the use of a

foreman’s horse’s hoofprints in a spell designed to benefit the workers on a Colombian sugar

plantation. He relates this direct example of Frazer’s law of contagion to practices like

fingerprinting, in which the copy has a particular kind of power (in this case legal or carceral)

over the original. This kind of “state magic,” an idea he would explore further in his subsequent

book, The Magic of the State , is exactly the use of sympathetic magic that “eluded Frazer’s eye,

as well as the eye of the anthropology that followed and spurned him from the beginning of the

twentieth century until our time, namely the magic of the modern--not the primitive—world . . .”

(Mimesis 54). Thus, the everyday secular scene in which fingerprints, or legal documents, for instance, stand in for an individual or a group, partakes in the magic of Frazer’s laws of sympathy. As Taussig claims, “[w]e, upon reflection, have to acknowledge the importance to such usage of the magic that in fact exists within the art of modern, secular, statecraft itself”

(Mimesis 63). To bring it further into an occult perspective, these actions are not only prime examples of synecdoche; they also demonstrate that within the workings of the secular state lies a basic Hermetic principle espoused by Agrippa, Ficino, and their ilk: that the microcosm represents the macrocosm. In other words, as above so below.

Taussig also uses the model of sympathetic magic to address the link between Marx’s concept of commodity fetishism and Benjamin’s notion of the aura of the product. In this case, the product stands in for, and effectively erases, the process that created it. Technology works like this; if we do not understand how it works, then the process may as well be magic to us (how

231 many of us can explain what happens when we turn on our computer? We simply have faith

that it will work). Therefore, Marx’s commodity fetishism can apply most strongly to the

magical, technological product: the computer, the cell phone, the mp3 player, etc. Taussig

explains that this concept “resulted from the curious effect of the market on human life which

displaced contact between people onto that between commodities, thereby intensifying to the

point of spectrality the commodity as an autonomous entity with a will of its own” ( Mimesis 22).

When we think of two computers communicating through email or instant messaging, this spectrality becomes clear. Further, “the commodity yet conceals in its innermost being not only the mysteries of the socially constructed nature of value and price, but also all its particulate sensuosity--and this subtle interaction of sensuous perceptibility and imperceptibility accounts for the fetish quality, the animism and spiritual glow of commodities so adroitly channeled by advertising (not to mention the avant-garde) since the late nineteenth century” ( Mimesis 22-3).

Here, Taussig points to the occult qualities inherent to economic exchange, qualities not lost on

Marx who, Taussig points out, frequently used alchemy as a metaphor for the flow of exchange between money and commodity ( State 138). Indeed, the invention of money itself reveals the extent to which sympathetic magic is present in our everyday lives. Money was meant to stand in for a transaction initially based on the trade of solid goods.

However, the most alchemical part of the economic process is the creation of the mysterious, magical product: the commodity, the fetish. Here, Taussig continues to invoke

Benjamin by exploring the magical process of mass production. This process involves removing the copy from its original context, while at the same time reinvesting that copy with some of the magical qualities of the original--the aura--because of its very similarity to the original. Taussig applies the notion of the “aura” particularly to what he calls “mimetically capacious machines,”

232 products of technology that allow the reproduction of human voice and image and especially when these machines, and their effective ability to copy subjectivity, play essential roles in contact between European anthropologists and their primitive subjects. 17 To this end, Taussig

makes much of Benjamin’s following statement: “Every day the urge grows stronger to get hold

of an object at very close range by way of its likeness, its reproduction” (“Work of Art” 223).

Throughout his text, Taussig provides examples in the realm of colonialist anthropology in

which this fetishistic desire for both contact and copying is embodied in the primitive’s

fascination with reproductions and copies, particularly of themselves. He further argues that the

restoration of the magical properties of the object through reproduction, and the fetishistic desire

for that reproduction, are instances in which Frazer’s sympathetic magic aligns itself with

Benjamin’s theories on imaging technology. In these cases, according to Taussig, sympathetic

magic becomes colonialist, modernist, and perhaps even Marxist ( Mimesis 58).

Most fascinating in Taussig’s work, however, are the times in which he implicates the

anthropologist, the scholar, and himself in the process of sympathetic magic. For instance, he

offers a fascinating example of the ways in which anthropology and occultism come together and

mirror each other in “Viscerality, Faith and Skepticism: Another Theory of Magic.” In this essay

on shamanism in the ethnographies of Boas and Evans-Pritchard, Taussig theorizes on a crucial

move of occult performance: the dynamic of concealment and revelation. Describing a

shamanistic performance, Taussig proclaims, “the real skill of the practitioner lies not in skilled

concealment but in the skilled revelation of skilled concealment. Magic is efficacious not despite

the trick, but on account of its exposure. The mystery is heightened, not dissipated, by

17 See especially chapters 14 and 15 in Mimesis and Alterity .

233 unmasking, and, in various ways, direct and oblique, ritual serves as a stage for so many unmaskings” (“Viscerality” 222). Here, Taussig refers to the social processes behind shamanic training that are chronicled in these anthropological texts. Within these narratives, for instance, when a shaman reveals to an apprentice that his “magic” is actually sleight of hand, the apprentice actually becomes more rather than less invested in the process. Taussig reveals that the aura of shamanic practice in these narratives is increased rather than diminished by their revelation as trick, and that the true magic lies in the skilled performance of these tricks, rather than in any putative “magic” being performed. This amounts to a kind of performance theory, in which “mimetic simulation is a way of keeping hidden things secret while displaying them”

(“Viscerality” 241). 18 This act of revealing and concealing, which has vast implications for contemporary Western magickal practices, such as initiation, is also a salient concept for understanding occult discourse.

For instance, Taussig interprets an incident in which Evans-Pritchard tricks a witch- doctor into exposing his own trickery as an example of magic versus magic. Rather than choosing to read the story as an Enlightenment exposure of primitive magic, Taussig asks the question, “whether or not the anthropologist was himself part of a larger and more complex staging in which exposure of tricks is the name of the game, and that what we are witness to via the text is an imaginative, albeit unintended and serendipitous, rendition of the skilled revelation of skilled concealment necessary to the mix of faith and skepticism necessary to magic”

(“Viscerality” 245). Thus, Taussig constructs Evans-Pritchard as a kind of Enlightenment

18 Similarly, in Simon During’s study of stage magic, he claims that tricks based on artifice, like sleight of hand or those performed through optics, were considered to be “real” magic by medieval and early modern theorists because they “materialized nature’s occult qualities through ‘experiments’” (19).

234 magician, representative of many such magi, including Adorno, Nietzche, and Marx, who claim to critique and move beyond magical practice, while at the same time infusing their own work with magical metaphor and sleight-of-hand maneuvers. The performative trope of concealing and revealing, a particular occult one, is present not only in actual magical rituals and practice, but in scholarly discourse about magical rituals and practice. Particularly, the Frankfurt school’s study of the failure of the Enlightenment is rife with both magical metaphor and occult subject matter. These theorists also aid in demonstrating that, somewhat ironically given the terms, modern occultism itself is a product of the Enlightenment.

Throughout his works, Taussig hints at the “magical” power of anthropologists and theorists. In The Magic of the State , he reminds us of Marx’s penchant for alchemical and occult language, claiming that ( Das Kapital ) The Critique of Political Economy

seems to welcome the mysteries and gleefully embrace them in that instant before they

crush him. He does not demystify so much as play mystery off against mystery, magic

against magic in the Karl Marx son et lumiere spectacular, and his own theory is of

necessity complicit with the alchemy it appears to scoff at. . . . Indeed, he is no less

dramatic than a spirit medium, escorting us into a séance of capitalist circulation of

metamorphosing powers. ( Magic of the State 140, emphasis in original)

For Taussig, Marx serves as a primary example of a theorist who uses occult metaphors like alchemy and spirit possession in order to both reveal and play with ideas of capitalism and modernity. The modernist theorist extraordinaire, who exposes the hidden secrets, is no less a magician than those that have created the illusion in the first place. This is especially the territory of Horkheimer and Adorno’s The Dialectic of Enlightenment , in which the magician is both an

235 ancient relic and a figure of the Enlightenment who channels magic and superstition under

the guise of rationality and reason.

Here, mimesis--and by implication, sympathetic magic--becomes “a repressed presence

not so much erased by Enlightenment science and practice as distorted and used as hidden force”

(Mimesis 45). Further, Taussig outlines Horkheimer and Adorno’s fear that rational man would passively yield to this process through his domination by labor and production, ultimately losing the self amongst his surroundings. But yet, the figure of the magician returns as a multivalent figure, someone who may have the power to resist such repression at the same time as he could easily implement it. Taussig explains it thus:

For the early magician signifies, as [Horkheimer and Adorno] would have it, not merely

“a yielding attitude to things,” but the threshold of history where mimesis as a practice

for living with nature blurs with the transformation of mimesis into an instrument for

dominating nature, the “organization of mimesis” necessary to that long march

culminating in Enlightenment civilization. ( Mimesis 46-7)

This move from working with nature to domination over nature seems to be at the heart of the sense of alienation in the industrial, capitalist world described by Horkheimer and Adorno, who characterized the magician as a man who increasingly gains a godlike sovereignty over nature through rational and empirical approaches to science. Through this power over nature comes a distinct alienation from nature, which is at the heart of the rationalist project. 19

In this formulation, magic becomes analogous to power, particularly the power to enchant society en masse. The authors even seem to recognize a gematria-centered kabalistic philosophy

19 Ironically, as we will see later, contemporary practitioners of nature religions like Wicca make exactly the same point, using this alienation as the primary inspiration for their “re-enchantment of the world.”

236 when they claim that the bourgeois society of the Enlightenment “makes the dissimilar comparable by reducing it to its abstract quantities. To the Enlightenment, that which does not reduce to numbers, and ultimately to the one, becomes illusion” (7). In other words, for the

Enlightenment, all knowledge must be contained within this totalizing philosophy, and everything left on the outside is fiction and fantasy. This differs markedly from the Renaissance philosophy of correspondence that, although it was based on the concept that everything is in some way connected, still held that these connections were part of an ultimate unknowable mystery that philosophers must spend their lives attempting to uncover. For the rationalist, all mystery must succumb to the authority of man. 20 Again, Horkheimer and Adorno demonstrate their point by invoking magical performance:

Magic is utterly untrue, yet in it domination is not yet negated by transforming itself into

the pure truth and acting as the very ground of the world that has become subject to it.

The magician imitates demons; in order to frighten them or to appease them, he behaves

frighteningly or makes gestures of appeasement. Even though his task is impersonation,

he never conceives of himself as does the civilized man for whom the unpretentious

preserves of the happy hunting-grounds become the unified cosmos, the inclusive concept

for all possibilities of plunder. The magician never interprets himself as the image of the

invisible power; yet this is the very image in which man attains to the identity of self that

cannot disappear through identification with another, but takes possession of itself once

and for all as an impenetrable mask. (9-10)

20 My use of masculine gender here imitates the author’s use, and I consciously use the term “man” as the process Horkheimer and Adorno describe is inevitably that of patriarchal power.

237 The contrast between the magician, read as “primitive,” and the “civilized” man lies in the reduction of the invisible power to man himself. The mask that this new “civilized magician” produces becomes that very image of power. Thus, for Enlightenment philosophers, the ultimate magical act was to subsume all mystery to the undeniable power of man, who ultimately lords over the universe of nature, denying the superstitious and supernatural.

However, the process that Horkheimer and Adorno describe is undeniably a magical performance in which the magician transforms himself not by becoming someone else, but by becoming more Himself. Perhaps this impenetrable mask is the Higher Self that magicians like

Aleister Crowley constantly strove to attain. Indeed, Crowley himself embodies a strange combination of the primitive magician and civilized rationalist, as he constantly equates his form of magick with scientific method (xv). 21 Further, he constantly reifies the mask of man as the source of invisible power, as he was known to proclaim himself the prophet of a new age, under the title of Master Therion. 22 A far cry from Frazer’s contention that the magician does not analyze “the mental assumptions on which his performance is based,” Crowley’s magician certainly demonstrates a shift in emphasis towards magick as an art and a science, offering a potent example of a figure in which magic and Enlightenment thought come together.

“A Critical Lexicon of Counter-Spells”: Magic as Rhetoric

21 Though the Spiritualist movement of Crowley’s day used the trappings of science and technology for their displays, Crowley saw his method as more scientific (in terms of experimentation) and more magickal. Though he believed in necromancy, particularly the style practiced by Lévi, Crowley tended to view spiritualists either as mere charlatans or as individuals who, though they may have had genuine talent, did not take the proper magickal precautions against conjuring negative spirits who might impersonate those being called. He refers to just such a situation as “altogether, a most poisonous performance ” ( Magick Without Tears 183, emphasis mine).

22 This was Crowley’s new religion, Thelema (Greek for will), and his followers are called Thelemites. This supposed religion, however, cannot be interpreted as such in any traditional sense. See Putin (311).

238 At first glance, Aleister Crowley might seem to confirm the worst fears of theorists who critique magic as the realm of self-serving egotist rebelling against “proper religion.” The prolific Crowley made no attempt to hide his deep, rancorous disdain for Christianity, though he may not have been entirely against religion as such, since he was constantly fascinated by

Eastern religions, and his own teachings of Thelema were an attempt to create a new religion.

But not only did Crowley, dubbed “The Wickedest Man in the World” by the British press, inspire horror from his contemporary Victorian and Edwardian society, even members of the

Golden Dawn thought he was far too extreme in his beliefs and practices. Unlike many of the conservative Dawn members, Crowley had no qualms including sex (with women or men) in his rituals. 23 His view of the universe was certainly a bit more sinister than the typical Golden Dawn magician. One of his most infamous operations was the invocation of the demon Choronzon in the North African desert that involved Crowley and his assistant and lover, Victor Neuberg, performing elaborate rituals, some with a strong sexual component, in order to draw this demon into Crowley himself. Crowley believed he had to not only face his demons, but become them, before he could be raised to the next level of his Adeptship. Alex Owen interprets this episode as

“emblematic of the breakdown of the personal sense of self as manifested by the ego, the uncoupling of the body from the ‘I,’ and the dissolution of everyday consciousness” (210). Thus,

23 Crowley, like other less conservative ceremonial magicians, saw the energy raised by sex as potent magickal power that could be harnessed during ritual. He was undoubtedly influenced by training in Tantric Yoga and the study of sexual imagery in alchemy. Sexual magick could involve raising energy through sex, as one might through chanting or singing, or could even incorporate the use of semen as a magickal substance that can be mixed with liquids and ingested. This is certainly what Crowley referred to when he infamously joked that “a male child of perfect innocence and high intelligence” was an ideal sacrifice and that he made such a sacrifice about 150 times a year between 1912 and 1928 ( Magick 95). Rather than believe that Crowley is admitting to killing thousands of children, it is more likely, given the context of these comments, that he is in fact referring to the use of semen in ritual (see also Putin 347-8). This type of experimentation was chronicled in the Magickal Record of the Beast , which includes many journal entries that describe sexual encounters with prostitutes within ritual space (see also Owen 218).

239 Crowley’s work interrogated modernist ideas about subjectivity and he often pushed the boundaries of the Self--sometimes quite literally, as the Choronzon incident features a dramatic scene in which Crowley/Choronzon attacks his assistant after quietly erasing Neuberg’s protective circle.

On a less dramatic level, Crowley’s writing tended to reflect modernist binaries of science and religion. Like John Dee before him, Crowley made great effort to establish his work as more important than just conjuring, thus making the “low magic/high magic” distinction that has tended to remain in contemporary magickal practice. While “low magic” was for the realm of the poor and uneducated concerned with obtaining money, property, and sex, “high magic” was for those with loftier spiritual goals. Thus, in the binary between religion and magic, “high magic” takes on the role of religion. Further, Crowley believed that his project would ultimately bring scientific rationalism to bear on magickal practice and prove to the world the logic of magick. In the introduction to his classic, Magick in Theory and Practice , which he first published in 1929, Crowley offers his aforementioned definition of magick: “the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with will.”

He immediately follows with an illustration of this definition, demonstrating the connection between magick and the act of writing:

It is my Will to inform the World of certain facts within my knowledge. I therefore take

“magical weapons,” pen, ink, and paper; I write “incantations”--these sentences--in the

“magical language” i.e. that which is understood by the people I wish to instruct; I call

forth “spirits,” such as printers, publishers, booksellers, and so forth, and constrain them

to convey my message to those people. The composition and distribution of this book is

thus an act of

240 MAGICK

by which I cause Changes to take place in conformity with my Will. (xiii, emphasis in

original)

Here Crowley emphasizes the metaphorical application of magic towards a seemingly mundane act of writing, publishing, and distributing a text. He references the medieval tradition of constraining “spirits” to perform tasks for the magician. But for Crowley, magick is more than just metaphor. When he speaks of directing his Will--always capitalized to signify the notion of an individual’s higher self willing, a True Will--he makes no distinction between literally conjuring spirits in a ritual circle and conjuring the “spirits” inherent to the act of publication.

For him, both acts are equally magickal. He emphasizes the term “magick” by placing it in bold letters, all capitals, and centered on the page, set apart from the rest of the text, a pattern he repeats throughout the introduction. Further, the repetition of this word and its layout essentially becomes an incantation itself, a kind of magical performative writing.

Crowley follows this with an exhaustive list of theorems. For instance, Crowley proclaims, “Every intentional act is a Magical Act” and further offers several explanations of the need for the proper conditions, abilities, and understanding in order for magick to be successful

(xiii). Building upon these theorems, contemporary magician Donald Michael Kraig reminds the practitioner that the change Crowley speaks of was later modified by Dion Fortune, lay psychologist and magician in an offshoot of the Golden Dawn, as a change in consciousness. In other words, the change brought forth by willed action is merely one of perception. Kraig then tells us, “the result functions as if there had been a change in the physical world, regardless of whether there had been a change in the physical world or just a change in your consciousness”

(9, emphasis in original). So, returning to our example of the prosperity candle from earlier, a

241 practitioner can view receiving money as a magical occurrence or as simply a matter of the

practitioner achieving a more finely tuned financial sense that enabled him to earn money more

easily. Either way, in the language of the practitioner, the performance of the magical act focuses

that individual’s consciousness and will, and the result is the same. This space of the “as if” is

central to the understanding and practice of magick, just as it is for Stanislavski’s actor training

or Victor Turner’s notions of ritual.

In describing the goals of ceremonial magick and the communion between the magician

and supposedly external entities like spirits, gods or angels, Ronald Hutton concludes, “In the

last analysis it did not matter to this work whether or not the entities concerned had any actual

existence as long as the magician felt as if they did at the moment of working, and achieved the

transforming visions and sensations which were the object of the process” ( Triumph 83).

Therefore, a major component of the magical act, both in practical magic and so-called “high magic,” is the interpretation of the resultant events. As Tanya Luhrmann discovers in her ethnography of Pagan groups in England, magicians acquire new intellectual habits that involve identifying patterns as evidence that a ritual has worked, seeing “connections where previously he had seen coincidence” (115). With this kind of magical interpretation, individual subjectivity is paramount, a belief cultivated by the Golden Dawn magicians that remains essential to occult practice today.

Crowley’s notions about the individual will and what place the individual had in both society and the cosmos were particularly representative of fin-de-siècle occultism, which was

“deeply invested in the elision of the concepts of consciousness and self and was intent on exploring what occultists took to be the limitless spiritual potential of that personal consciousness” (Owen 121). In their theoretical and practical work, magicians of this era

242 emphasized personal experience and subjectivity and sought to create an occult world

“simultaneously determined and experienced by human consciousness--the active principle of creator and created combining to produce a new logos” (Owen 183). Occultists sought to reconcile the rational and irrational, as Crowley’s comments about the “science and art” of magick indicate. According to Owen, occultists cultivated a “modern sensibility that remained immured in and fascinated by the performance of the irrational even as it sought to measure, understand, and to some extent, control or manipulate it” (146). In fact, Owen focuses on

Crowley as the primary example of the modern magician who attempted to approach the occult rationally while simultaneously exploring the limits of self-consciousness through metaphysical means. Crowley himself tended to keep highly detailed journals, recording his magickal workings as if they were scientific experiments with controls and variables and instructed his students to do the same. 24 For him, like many magicians, the irrational could be rendered rational through both structured ritual performance and the act of writing itself. Crowley, then, is the consummate figure of the modern magician who regarded magick as a performed extension of will and the magician as the repository for individual control and power, thus re-enchanting the increasingly secularized world of modernity.

Crowley’s notion of the True Will certainly emphasizes individual sovereignty, even when it is seemingly illusory. Crowley’s definition of magick is the process of causing change.

Therefore, when a practitioner performs this magick, he feels that he can influence events he previously felt powerless over. But if one believes that such influence is possible, one must allow for the possibility that individuals exist who will wield that power unethically or immorally. This

24 See especially Aleister Crowley’s diaries, published as The Magical Record of the Beast 666 , edited and annotated by Kenneth Grant and John Symonds.

243 fear is what lies at the heart of conspiracy theory and urban legends about secret societies,

like the Illumanati, that decide humanity’s fate behind closed doors. Magic has this particular

power because of its putative ability to work invisibly and irrationally through manipulation,

superstition and the gullibility of the masses.

Expanding on this notion of magical power, William A. Covino in Magic, Rhetoric, and

Literacy brings together various uses of magic as a metaphor for rhetoric, invoking phrases like

“magical thinking” and “magical consciousness.” He begins by presenting a stand against astrology and magic made by scientists in a 1975 edition of The Humanist , where critics malign

“a magical world view [that] leads to uncritical faith” in supernatural forces and destiny (3).

Covino also points out associations that these scientists make between so-called “magical consciousness” and the illiteracy of the masses. This characterization involves exactly the passivity that Horkheimer and Adorno fear, in which the individual simply gives into the forces that surround him, whether the mysterious force is labor and production, the government, or advertising. According to this theory, the passive individual, redolent with superstitious beliefs, is powerless to act upon the world. Covino, as a professor of language, literacy, and rhetoric, particularly applies this to the classroom, citing sources that criticize the “magical classroom” and “teacher as sorcerer.” According to these critics, magical pedagogy, based on inspiration and a romantic creativity, produces “writing [that] is a silent, solitary product fully formed in the writer’s consciousness, and it materializes on demand; in other words, the writer is the passive recipient of an astral gift.” Further, this kind of magical thinking “denies students a teachable, practical skill” and “places them outside the hall of articulate power” (4). In this scenario, the person who wields the magical power is the teacher, “a creature of obscure pronouncements and occult skills who keeps students inarticulate by mystifying composition” (5). Opposed to this

244 “magical classroom” is an environment in which process is emphasized over product, and students are taught the recursive nature of writing, with emphasis on drafting and revision. 25

Yet, Covino points out that these critics “fear the magical thinking that disallows alternatives to authorized knowledge. . . .The literate individual, then, is one able to question and resist the performative pronouncements of an institutionalized sorcerer, standing ready with a critical lexicon of counter-spells” (8). In other words, the literate individual is himself possessed with magical powers to counteract the sorcery of institutional authority. For Covino, the medium for such counter-sorcery is literacy and pedagogy, and the location for power is the classroom.

Yet, this empowered individual’s potential for resistance against the magical forces can apply to other conceptual models of power and subjugation, including, as we have seen, the Marxian sphere of labor and production. If such a figure exists, he could certainly combat the passivity that Horkheimer and Adorno warn against. Covino further defines this counter magic as “the practice of disrupting and recreating articulate power: a (re)sorcery of spells for generating multiple perspectives” (9, emphasis in original). In essence, Covino begins to map out a contrast between what he calls “arresting magic” and “generative magic,” using Kenneth Burke’s formulations in his classic 1945 work A Grammar of Motives as a model. According to Covino’s reading of Burke, so-called “true” or “correct” magic is “generative, practiced as constitutive inquiry, or the coercive expansion of the possibilities of human action,” whereas “[f]alse- incorrect magic--distinct from both the pure novelty of true magic and the shared creativity of correct magic--is arresting, practiced as enforced doctrine, or the coercive reduction of the possibilities for human action. This last principle extends . . . to situations in which people are treated as things, in which the magus orders automatistic behavior” (93). Very simply, generative

25 As both a teacher of composition and a magical practitioner, I find this notion particularly striking.

245 magic creates possibilities, while arresting magic forecloses them. Here we have the tools of

both the traditional sorcerer bent on manipulation, feared by those writing against the occult, and

the unorthodox magician who has the potential to resist that manipulation.

Like Burke, Covino continuously aligns the magician with the rhetorician, the person

with the skill and power to transform through language. He points out several historical

examples, including Plato’s Phaedrus , in which the magic and rhetoric amount to the same thing, and the rhetor/magician works with a particular strategy to produce a desired effect on the listeners and the world around. And this magic is not just about words themselves. Given the sympathetic universe in which the magician functions, Covino acknowledges the role that correspondences, formulas, incantations, spells, and grimoires play in the magical act. Yet, he claims that magical efficacy is also predicated on context and imagination, perhaps even more so. Therefore, according to Covino,

Magic is not the instant and arhetorical product of an otherworldly incantation; it is the

process of inducing belief and creating community, with reference to the dynamics of a

rhetorical situation. Magic is a social act whose medium is persuasive discourse, and so it

must entail the complexities of social interaction, invention, communication, and

composition. Thus magic becomes a term through which we can address the ways in

which words make real things happen. (11)

Covino’s proposition highlights not only the connection between magic and rhetoric, but reveals the salient implication that, as J.L. Austin always said, words do something. Indeed, Covino links the Austinian performative with Daniel O’Keefe’s “magical power prescriptives” from his Stolen

Lightning: The Social Theory of Magic . Covino adds, “in such cases, the rhetor performs magic by effecting real action; in the event that any of us employ powerful words to change a situation,

246 or are ourselves changed by what we read or hear, we participate in a magical transactive transformation” (22). Associating the Austinian performative, in which to say something is to make it happen, with magical practice does not seem to be too far a stretch, especially if we remember that Crowley defines magic as change in conformity with will. Therefore, “I pronounce you husband and wife” is certainly a magical transformation, even if the marriage ceremony is merely a secular one. Here, if we take Austin’s definition of a perlocutionary speech act primarily as an efficacious act, in which the proclamation spoken has definite effects, then the performance of that speech act is an act of magic, of change in conformity with will. 26

Working from the notion that magic and rhetoric are practically interchangeable, Covino goes on to outline the qualities of both generative and arresting magic. For Covino, the expanding and foreclosing of possibilities within generative and arresting are specifically possibilities for action, based on the meaning and context of the actual language used. For instance, Covino offers advertising, like the Nike “Just Do It” ad, as a primary example of arresting magic: “This is the magic of authoritarian, simplistic incantations passed from salesperson to consumer, from teacher to student, incantations that identify preferred public discourse as instantaneous, formulaic, and absolute” (23). Generative magic, on the other hand, deals in multiple meanings. Returning to the Renaissance magician’s philosophy of correspondences and analogical connections between disparate objects and symbols, Covino acknowledges the inexact process of coming up with the right magical utterance, of matching discourse and action. This is a tricky and often dangerous business, “because every utterance is at once invocative, value-laden, interactive, and indeterminate, language is an exploratory act, a range of appeals to the mysterious” (59), and, with the wrong utterance, the possibility exists that

247 the magician can invoke evil spirits. Therefore, the magician must always be aware of the

possibility for multiple interpretations. Covino neglects to say exactly how, or even if, the

magician could use this uncertainty to his advantage. But he does apply it to his notion of

“generative literacy,” which he defines as “ an alertness to ambiguity in spoken or written discourse . This literacy becomes a foundation for generative magic rhetoric: alertness to ambiguity is a ‘competence’ that makes possible its own ‘performance,’ as transformative rhetoric” (28, emphasis in original). Thus, the successful magician is always aware of the possibility of multivalence, in reading magical texts, in deciphering magical correspondences and especially in interpreting the results of a magical spell.

Accordingly, practitioners constantly comment on the importance of keeping an open mind when practicing magic, particularly when gauging whether a spell has “worked” or not. In other words, practitioners must have a wide range for their definitions of efficacy. For instance, my mentors constantly advised me to “give the universe room to work” by not placing too many restrictions on the results of a particular working. In other words, if I am doing a prosperity spell,

I must be willing to accept that prosperity may come in many different forms, not just as monetary currency. This seems to go against the usual “be careful what you wish for” caveat, but my mentors have told me to seek balance between the two, by avoiding work that is both too general and too specific. Similarly, Phyllis Curott cautions her readers that “magic often works in unexpected ways, and its timing is also not on the same schedule as yours” ( Witch Crafting 209).

Therefore, the multiple possibilities for action that Covino attributes to generative magic exist within the interpretive processes of the magician. Luhrmann also talks about the rhetorical flexibility inherent to the language of magical practice that allows for broad interpretations of

26 For this discussion of the perlocutionary speech act, see Austin (121).

248 success (220). In my own practice, various factors often contribute to a piece of magic “not working.” Perhaps I created a talisman to help me focus on getting a job I wanted, but I did not get the job. I might chalk it up to not being ready for that job at this point in my life, or that I was somehow saved from achieving something that would have been detrimental to my career development. 27 Conceived in this fashion, magical practices seem to inherently protect its claims against what J.L. Austin terms “infelicities,” things that go wrong because of a failed performative utterance (14).

Yet, spells are not just abstract performatives uttered without a mechanism to support them, like Austin’s notion of misinvocations and misapplications. Both Kraig and Curott offer us seemingly contradictory theories regarding the mental and psychological focus of the magician, as well as the physical actions the magician takes. For instance, Kraig gives us the example of

“John Magus,” who performs a prosperity spell, then spends the rest of the day worrying about how to pay his bills. In this case, according to Kraig, John Magus creates his own poverty by thinking too much about money, thus counteracting the magical work he did to create money

(290). Kraig further explains that magic works on a subconscious level, so once you create a talisman, for example, it is best to forget about it, since “constantly bringing the aspect of the mind which connects us to the astral plane down to the physical world will lower the effectiveness of your magical work” (314). Here, the astral plane is a hidden realm where magic waits, where the magician creates patterns through imaginative visualization. According to practitioners like Kraig, all magic is formed in that world first before it can be brought into

27 The language of my group usually indicates that a divine power somehow influences (but does not control) our destiny. Whereas someone of a Judeo-Christian belief might say “God,” or a Wiccan might say “the Goddess,” the people I generally associate with use the term “the universe” to indicate some sort of sentient pattern to everything. For instance, “the universe had some surprises in store for me this year.”

249 manifestation. The magician forms the desired outcome through symbolic objects and

language (like the blessing of a talisman). Thus, the magician creates a desired pattern that he

wishes to bring into the physical world, like prosperity. Yet, it is also important to do physical

work to back up the magical work. Curott admonishes “failing to act in accord confines your

magic to abstract realms and prevents it from taking form in the world. For a spell to work, you

must ground it in material reality by taking action” ( Witch Crafting 205). For instance, if “John

Magus” does a magical working to gain employment, he will only bring about his desire if he actually applies for jobs. Though it seems that this might undermine the magical aspect of the working, practitioners genuinely believe that the working may illuminate a possibility for employment that the magician may have missed or create a situation in which the practitioner is more visible to a potential employer. Curott makes a further point about individual will and identity when she claims that “acting in accord,” backing up magic with physical action,

“reminds you that your life is magic” ( Witch Crafting 206). Thus, Curott makes a socially

significant statement, claiming that magical practitioners align their daily, mundane choices with

their spiritual beliefs and magical practice.

This alignment of life politics and magical practice certainly brings to mind the kind of

generative magic that Covino describes. According to Covino, generative magic:

is a dialogical critique that seeks novelty, originating at a remove from the mass culture it

would interrogate. However, insofar as generative magic seeks social and cultural

change, it enters the world it questions. Thus generative magic is at once private and

public, occult and common, an esoteric critical discourse of “specialist” communities that

define themselves in opposition to the mainstream, and an amplification of possibilities

for action. (9)

250 Covino articulates here a particular dynamic for occult practice that Enlightenment-based

theoretical concepts of magic do not usually take into account, since they define magic as a

passive, irrational belief subject to mystical, authoritarian control. Rather, Covino’s generative

magic offers different possibilities. Magic is an active, non-rational method for both engaging

and interpreting social phenomena and textual relations. And, as authors in and out of the inner

folds of magical practice have attested, magic itself is nomadic, dependent upon the context in

which it operates and the intention of the user. Magic consists of acts that are ritual performances

enacted with intention to achieve specific results. These acts are always grounded within a given

culture, time period, and setting and are contingent upon the personality of the magician. As

Starhawk mentions in The Spiral Dance , one of the most widely read contemporary books on

neo-pagan witchcraft and magic, “Magic, like chemistry, is a set of techniques that can be put to

the service of any philosophy” (28). Similarly, Michael Taussig, in The Magic of the State,

grants magic this free-floating status, describing the folk belief that Colombian police can make

themselves invisible or appear in greater numbers. He claims “these very same powers of

confusion and illusion can be turned against the state and used by ordinary people so as to free

prisoners and avoid military service . . .” (123). The implication is, then, that magic, as a

statement, a performative, an act, a discourse of practices, might be used to resist and empower

just as easily as it can be used to manipulate and control.

However, Covino critiques popular magical practices, particularly those presented by

Starhawk, as ultimately arresting and not generative. Further, the philosophers of the Frankfurt

School, particularly Adorno and Marcuse, claim that “popular occultism affirms and reproduces

positivist rationality, instead of providing a mode of negation” (96). Like the Humanist scientists,

Adorno uses popular astrology, as a case study for passive, “secondary superstition,”

251 proclaiming occultism as a “metaphysic of dunces” (89). Yet, these philosophers state a desire for a kind of language that refuses to accept limitations on freedom, in other words, a magic to counter the sorcery of authoritarianism. Elsewhere, in one of his many critiques of

Walter Benjamin, Adorno accused his friend and colleague of creating a sort of “magical positivism,” by refusing to supply the metatheoretical presuppositions for his work, thus remystifying what he sought to demystify. Deliberately using language tinged with occult themes, Adorno chides, “[y]our study is located at the crossroads of magic and positivism. That spot is bewitched. Only theory can break the spell” (qtd. in Wolin 201). Thus by offering theory as a sort of counter-magic, Adorno adds his formidable sorcery to the fray, fighting magic with magic like any good witch doctor would. Yet, Covino acknowledges that ultimately Adorno and

Marcuse “do not think that a community of truly radical counter-magicals is realizable” (115).

Further, the kind of magical language they call for seems impossible, since it must be somehow separable from the mesmerism of mass culture. What these philosophers desire seems to truly be an obscure, hermetic language, cut off from everyday life and culture. But if we take into account Phyllis Curott’s assertion about magic and everyday life, this isolation and separation of theory from culture is directly opposed to the important connections between magical practice, everyday life and political action. These connections are as strong for contemporary practitioners as they were for their fin-de-siècle counterparts, as demonstrated by Alex Owen.

More than just an interesting metaphor, the uses that theorists make of magic cannot be ignored when addressing the concerns of actual magical practice. Horkheimer and Adorno’s magic is not so far away from Crowley’s magick. Crowley’s own significant magical trope, the idea that writing and publishing are kinds of magic is significant here, because this magic becomes bound up with the processes of technology and capital. When approaching occultism as

252 a part of contemporary and popular culture, one must identify this slippage in order to recognize the ways in which practitioners and magical practices engage with the world.

Furthermore, the use of occult metaphors in both theory and culture reveals how Western society is still continually bound up in notions of the mysterious and hidden and actual magical practitioners are merely the most dramatic manifestation of that tendency.

Conclusion In the academic study of occultism, no concept is more contested than that of magic.

Furthermore, understanding occult initiation would be impossible without first broaching the subject of magic. Practitioners describe initiation in magical terms. The initiate is said to be

“magically” transformed by the rite, because of some change that occurs during the rite or a change that is sparked by the ritual process. This process can only be undergone as an act of will.

The candidate must consciously choose to be initiated, to dedicate him or herself to the initiatory path. Here, Crowley’s definition of magick applies most distinctly: through an act of will a candidate causes a change to occur. Of course, the candidate’s initiators help along with this process, but the true initiation happens within the individual.

Yet magic is almost always associated with power and, as we will see, the dynamics between the individual candidate and the initiating group are caught up in issues of power and knowledge. Thus, I have established how both scholars and practitioners have defined magic as a performance of power by examining the use of the term in anthropological, rhetorical and practical settings. In addition, by demonstrating practitioners’ approaches to magic, I have laid the foundation for understanding the daily practice and actual rituals practitioners perform, which in turn will lead us through discussions of practitioner approaches to ritual and socio- political practice. Indeed, magic is the very foundation of contemporary occult practice. In most

253 cases, initiation rites are initiations into the practice of magic. We will continue to explore magic more thoroughly in the next chapters, as we examine magical practice within ritual settings and magic rhetorical action in Pagan activism.

254 Chapter Six

“When the Veils Are Thin”: The Performance of Magickal Ritual

Undoubtedly, the realm of occultism and magick most ostensibly tied to performance is that of ritual. Within modern Western occultism, ritual is the primary modality for shaping and defining individual, group, and community identity, and the primary method of expression for practitioners engaged in a magickal religion. Ritual is usually a framework for the performance of magical acts like those discussed in the previous chapter. For those encountering a community of magickal practitioners, a public ritual is often the first active experience with such a community. Even for solitary practitioners, whose first exposure to occultism may be through a text, the performance of a magickal act within the context of ritual is what brings them into the realm of practice. As an experienced practitioner myself, rituals are the magickal modality with which I am most familiar, having attended, helped to facilitate, or even led countless rites in the past fifteen years. In this chapter, I address ritual as a magickal framework for individual transformation and collective mythologizing and negotiation. As part of our journey towards initiation, understanding magickal ritual is essential as a set of boundaries within which magickal acts of transformation like initiation can occur. Yet ritual is much more than just a structure. As

Margaret Thompson Drewal argues in her work on Yoruba ritual, the agency of the performers and their ability to engage in play and improvisation is what allows for transformation within the ritual. Drewal contends, “it is indeed the playing, the improvising, that engages people, drawing them into the action, constructing their relationships, thereby generating multiple and simultaneous discourses always surging between harmony/disharmony, order/disorder, integration/opposition, and so on” (7). This is no less true for Western magickal ritual, where

255 ritualists constantly attempt to balance between structure and improvisation in order to work a particular collective magic.

Similarly, my examples will vary between basic ritual structures that many magickal groups commonly utilize and some specific instances where improvisation directly influences the experience of the participants and the outcome of the rite. For the sake of convenience, the rites I will describe can be categorized in terms of audience and purpose. On the broadest level, larger public rites tend to be associated with seasonal celebrations, such as Samhain, the festival most associated with the practice of Pagan witchcraft. Of course, not all public rites are the same.

Typically, a publicly advertised event in Chicago would draw at most thirty to fifty people, while large rituals at popular festivals like Starwood might consist of hundreds of people. As Sabina

Magliocco rightly notes, such large public rites tend to focus more on theatricality and broad performance, as “issues such as visibility, audibility, and space take precedence over the subtle interplay of emotions” ( Witching Culture 148). On the opposite end of the spectrum are rites that focus on more intimate interactions, such as those intended for initiates only. These rites may focus on one particular member and his or her personal journey. Of course, initiation rituals themselves are the main example of the latter type, but many rites that are not formal initiations as such still follow an initiatory model. These categories are certainly not hard and fast, as some public rites may have an element of individual focus, such as a “Drawing Down the Moon” ceremony where participants may have one-on-one time with a priestess who is embodying a goddess figure, a ritual technique known as “aspecting.” Overall, I attempt to break down performative elements of the magickal ritual experience, while focusing on several improvised moves that allow participants to express their identities and values through performance.

Furthermore, through practices such as the use of magical names, aspecting, and ritual drama,

256 practitioners construct a kind of occult self. All of these elements are essential components of the initiation experience we will explore more fully in the final chapter. For this chapter, I will approach occult ritual in six stages: 1) the creation of sacred space, including the casting of the circle; 2) the invocation of elemental forces as a way to frame ritual action; 3) the invocation of deity, also known as aspecting; 4) the use of mythology and ritual drama; 5) performative gestures and magical acts; and 6) communal interaction, mostly through the example of the

“Spiral Dance.”

Typical occult rituals tend to be tightly framed and display a surprising amount of structural consistency across different traditions, despite liturgical variances. Much of this similarity is due to the common ancestry of modern Western occultism. For instance, even Pagan traditions that may stray far from Gerald Gardner’s Wicca in terms of their belief system and spiritual practices still might borrow heavily from Gardner’s ritual structure. Further, as was indicated earlier, Gardner himself liberally adapted ritual structure from both Freemasonry and the Golden Dawn. The standard opening procedure of such rites tends to follow a basic pattern:

Blessing, Banishing, Casting, Invocation. The frame of the rite literally establishes the world in which the work will take place. The participants cast the circle, establish the boundaries at cardinal points, and invoke the forces at each of these points that will determine the tenor and purpose of the rite. The center portion of the rite is used for magical activity, trance work or communal energy work. In many cases, the priest and priestess invoke (or take on the “aspect” of) a form of divine authority that allows them to facilitate the activity that will occur in the rite.

The participants perform the magical acts pertinent to that rite, whether the purpose is to heal, achieve a goal, or simply enter into a psychological process appropriate to the particular rite of passage being enacted or the season being celebrated. These activities are often followed by a

257 kind of communion, with ritualized sharing of food and drink, and the rite ends with some form of farewell, releasing whatever energy is raised or forces are invoked. The level of complexity for each phase may widely vary between groups and traditions, but the structure remains relatively consistent. Much of this structure is predicated specifically on the construction and maintenance of sacred space. Space is essential as a kind of cosmic theatre in which practitioners can perform their magic. Thus, staging is a primary element of occult ritual.

A balance of the four classical elements often determines this staging: Air, Fire, Water and Earth.

In traditional Western ceremonial magick, these elements correspond to the cardinal directions: East, South, West, and North, respectively. These directions also determine the important placement of the altar, a kind of microcosmic “stage” in which all aspects of the rite are represented. The most basic aspects of the altar are the four main tools that represent the four elements. In ceremonial magick tradition, again, these tools (often described in older literature as

“weapons”) are the same as the minor arcana of the Tarot deck: a dagger represents Air, a wand

Fire, a cup Water, and a pentacle Earth. The elements are also represented on a practical level by incense, a lit candle, actual water in a cup, and salt, respectively. These correspondences may vary among traditions. For instance, some Wiccan traditions reverse the elemental correspondences of the dagger and wand. Also, different traditions or, indeed, different rituals by the same group, may vary the placement of altars or the number of altars in a space. In some cases, a single central altar suffices. In others, each cardinal direction may have its own altar with corresponding tools, colors, and other representations. In addition to elemental correspondences, figures representing deities, both gods and goddesses, are most common on altars. These, of course, vary depending on the belief traditions of the particular group, or which deity is appropriate for the season. Overall, despite the consistency of elemental representations,

258 altars can be highly individualized expressions of personal beliefs and desires. For instance,

Jone Salomonsen contrasts typical altars by the Reclaiming Collective with those of Wiccan

traditions. Unlike Wiccan altars, which Salomonsen characterizes as places for “nonhuman

reality” to enter into ritual space, Reclaiming altars are “bridges from the living to the other world – not the other way around,” in which participants may load the altar with personal effects and representations (194). Altars are highly charged sign systems that hold importance for practitioners even beyond formalized ritual space, often acting as individual markers of belief, ancestry and identity, whether in the home or in community space, like festivals (Pike, Earthly

Bodies 65).

Altars are only one way of establishing space for the rite. The next key element is the space blessing. The main ritualists bless the space with the standard four elements. For Air, incense may be used, or ritualists may “smudge” participants with burning sage, an adaptation of

Native American practices currently popular among Pagans. This may be done after the group has gathered, or it may be done as a way to cleanse each participant as they enter the ritual space.

In these instances, ritualists may have already established the space prior to the participants entering. On some level, this choice may be a theatrical one, a way to set the “scene” and bring the participants (audience) into an already charged space. Burning candles, the representation of

Fire, thus provide theatrical lighting. Salt and water, representing the elements of Earth and

Water, respectively, round out the elements on the altar. Frequently, ritualists mix salt and water, said to represent “the blood of the Mother,” and sprinkle the space and participants with the

259 mixture, similar to a Catholic priest’s sprinkling of holy water. 1 For fire, a ritualist may carry a candle around the room while speaking a blessing.

In the Hermetic Order of Chicago, the group that I was mainly involved with between

1999 and 2004, as with many typical groups with substantial membership, different members who are not the main celebrants would be assigned to work with each element. For instance, one member would be responsible for all actions in the rite involving the element of air, so that he or should would conduct the air blessing and, later, the air invocation once the circle is cast.

Although some groups may write out and pre-plan these blessings and invocations in order to ensure a kind of authorial consistency, the Hermetic Order tended to leave these to the improvisatory talents of its members. Here, especially, is where individual performance skills would come into play, as some individuals would keep their blessings simple, mentioning basic elemental correspondences (Air = intellect, Fire = passion, will, Water = emotions, Earth: stability), while others might embellish their blessing with elaborate language and gesture.

Certainly style tends to vary between groups. For instance, at a ritual staged by the Chicago branch of the Reclaiming Collective, the element of Water was invoked by having the participants tap their hands to their knees, recalling a child’s game of making rain noises. At another rite performed at Beltane, the May fertility festival, a particularly memorable Earth invocation consisted of the ritualist tossing chocolate Hershey’s kisses to the crowd.

After these blessings, the energy becomes much more focused as participants joined together to “cast the circle.” Although this act, again, varies greatly depending on the group, the

1 These liturgical citations are from my own memory and experience. However, they can also be found in many basic magickal texts and instruction guides currently being published. My examples from the Hermetic Order of Chicago’s rites are fairly typical of common occult traditions, but are by no means the exact pattern that every group follows.

260 intent is consistent in that practitioners wish to establish a boundary for magical action.

While rites may take place in locations already established as sacred spaces, like groves,

sanctuaries, shrines and private land used for outdoor festivals, where such an action may be

redundant. The goal of many groups is to obtain some kind of permanent temple space, but settle

for temporary housing in meditation centers or workshop spaces in metaphysical bookstores.

However, most contemporary pagan gatherings occur in homes, spaces for rent, and other public spaces not necessarily designated for spiritual activities. In fact, Starhawk speculates that the circle casting developed as a result of persecution, in order to facilitate temporary space ( Spiral

Dance 72). Though some groups draw an actual circle on the floor with chalk, most groups

actually mime the drawing of the circle in the air, enacting a mimetic ritual gesture to separate

the space of ritual from “mundane” space. This separation serves to protect the circle from

outside negative forces and to contain and regulate the energy that the ritualists raise (Luhrmann

221). Practitioners may cast the circle with a sword, an athame (the traditional dagger of Wiccan

practice), or their finger. This is sometimes done silently, other times with a liturgical chant.

The Hermetic Order, for instance, used an adaptation of Gerald Gardner’s traditional

circle casting chant: “I conjure thee, O circle of power, that thou beest a boundary between the

world of mortals and the realms of the Mighty Ones. A guardian and protection to preserve and

contain the power that we shall raise within thee. Wherefore do I bless and consecrate thee.” 2

Ritualists would generally point to the East and then rotate in a complete circle while speaking the chant. Once the circle is cast, it remains the ritual boundary for the rest of the rite. While some groups see the circle as semi-permeable, some take its boundary very seriously, even

2 Gardner’s version is from his original Book of Shadows, which can be found online at www.sacred- texts.com/pag/gbos.htm , with the circle casting chant on page 40.

261 “cutting an opening” with a dagger and resealing it if an individual needs to leave the space.

Like most concepts in occult ritual practice, meanings of the circle vary, sometimes depending on the purpose of the rite. In solitary rituals, such as the medieval invocations that Aleister

Crowley practiced, a circle may act as a protection against negative forces or demons who may wish to enter, an idea often exaggerated and dramatized in horror fiction. Others might feel that the circle acts as a crucible of sorts, concentrating and focusing the energy of the magician or the group. Still others see the circle as symbolic of community and egalitarian human interactions.

This emphasis is demonstrated by an alternative form of circle casting, which has recently gained popularity, in which participants joining hands one by one, saying “Hand to hand, I cast the circle.” While the Gardnerian method creates space through a commanding desire to inscribe the magician’s will upon the universe, the “hand to hand” technique is a different kind of performative gesture that articulates a connection between people, thus remaking community as part of the rite itself.

After the ritualists cast the circle, the next step is to invoke the elements, also known as

“calling the quarters,” a reference to the undeniably military imagery in Gardner’s invocations, which calls on the Watchtowers of each direction. Again, how this is done is open to interpretation, varying greatly in style and complexity. In more intimate settings with smaller, more experienced groups, I have seen members silently call quarters to powerful effect. But in large public rites, where a certain amount of instruction is necessary for beginners, this is another instance where practitioners display improvisatory skills. As stated earlier, for the Hermetic

Order, those “quarter officers” who had been assigned to a certain element continue in that vein for the invocations. For the Order, quarter calling was a combination of the improvisational and the liturgical, as a ritualist’s improvised speech would almost always be followed by set words

262 and gestures. In this aspect, the Hermetic Order followed Golden Dawn practice in invoking

elemental energy through the “drawing” of pentagrams in the air. According to this practice,

each cardinal direction has two associated pentagrams, one considered “passive” and the other

“active,” distinguished by the point at which the drawing begins. Each direction follows a

different pattern of drawing. Using the two fingers of the right hand, or an athame, the ritualist

draws the pentagram while chanting, imagining the pentagram in blue flame. In typical Golden

Dawn tradition, this chant would consist of a Hebrew name for God. The Hermetic Order built

upon this by adding phrases from John Dee’s Enochian language that are particularly associated

with a given direction and element. This directly relates to the Golden Dawn practice of

associating an archangel with each direction and calling that angel as part of the standard

invocation. 3

This element of the invocation has a clear “call and response” aspect, as the main quarter caller would start the chant and the rest of the congregation, who have been facing the same direction, would join in. In most Pagan and ceremonial magick rites that involve quarter calling, participants usually face the same direction, with some individuals silently performing their own gestures. 4 For a new attendee of a typical Hermetic Order rite, these complicated gestures would

clearly distinguish the more experienced initiates from the inexperienced ones. However, this

was further confused by the fact that performance of these gestures could be inconsistent

between initiates who might make mistakes about which direction to draw the pentagrams.

Despite the problems with codifying these complex gestures, quarter calling is also important for

3 Raphael would be in the East, Gabriel in the West, Michael in the South, Uriel in the North.

4 Some traditions have particular gestures for each direction. For example, the Golden Dawn associates East with a gesture involving raised arms and upturned palms, a standard invocatory gesture that other traditions have adapted.

263 its improvisational elements. Like the blessings, quarter calling allows for individual

personalities and styles to emerge.

As a frequent quarter caller myself, I often found it challenging to say something

meaningful, avoid cliché sentiments, and get the job done. I freely admit--and I understood I was

not alone in this--that there were times that I let myself get distracted by questions of ego, in an

attempt to sound more impressively “magical.” Here, notions of performance become paramount

because the ritualist has to affect the conscious mood of the scene without being perceived as

“performing” in the pejorative sense. This, of course, is a constant challenge for ritualists in their

attempts at authenticity. Yet even times when I felt like I did not put all I had into an invocation,

I would still receive positive feedback. As Nikki Bado-Fralick suggests “religious communities

have their own criteria in determining when a religious performance is inauthentic, staged, or

faked in some way” (19). With enough experience, I was certainly able to determine when I felt

that a ritualist was just going through the motions, when the ritualist was performing from an

ego-driven basis or when the “energy was there.” But again, these assessments are highly

individualized.

Sabina Magliocco addresses this phenomenon, relating that she “was repeatedly amazed

by how rituals that seemed to me lackluster and boring could induce ecstatic states in other

participants. Ultimately, the qualities that move individuals remain ineffable” ( Witching Culture

147). Nonetheless, Magliocco determines that her Pagan subjects seems to universally agree what makes for failed ritual performance:

These included rituals that went on for too long, losing participants’ attention; scripted

presentations with little spontaneity and few participatory elements; rituals with

invocations that were incomprehensible to those present, either because they were recited

264 in a foreign language such as Old Norse or Gaelic, or because they were delivered in

a whisper; and disorganized rituals, in which no one was sure what was going on and

there seemed to be no direction (147).

I have certainly experienced all of these examples with rituals that I contributed to and those I witnessed. I have seen highly trained priests fumble because their rigidity did not adapt well when an unknown element was introduced. I have seen priestesses skip over an entire planned section of a ritual because of a split-second decision or because they forgot. I have seen planned rituals that have been flat and uninteresting, until an improvised element, like a spontaneous chant, is introduced. In many cases, the best rituals are barely controlled chaos, delicate balances between planning and “winging it.” This certainly aligns with Magliocco’s discovery that Pagans favor a strong “emphasis on spontaneity and creativity within an organized framework” (147).

However ritualists strike the balance between preparation and spontaneity, the most important criteria for their success is that they are genuine, “in the moment,” in touch with spiritual

“energy” and attentive to the needs and energy of the room.

Such questions of authenticity are most paramount in the next step of a typical Pagan rite, the invocation of deity. While some groups settle for a general call to deity, equivalent to prayer, others go further by specifically taking on the aspect of divinity, in essence, “channeling” a god or goddess, and speaking for that deity within the rite. 5 This process is roughly analogous to

“being ridden” by the loas in Voudoun trance possession (Clifton 28). In some cases, the deity is a generic bitheistic notion of “the God” or “the Goddess,” while in others the deity may be a

5 Chas Clifton mentions that trance possession, particularly emphasized by Gardnerian tradition, was originally not as common in other Wiccan traditions. He claims that one of the reasons for this is “a general American cultural wariness or fear of any sort of trance possession.” However, since the 1980s, with the influence of cross-fertilization with Haitian, African, and Brazilian religions, this attitude has somewhat lessened (32).

265 figure from a specific pantheon. Although for some rites, priests or priestesses aspect simply so that there will be a divine presence to oversee the proceedings, some rites are specifically predicated on aspecting as a central component. An example of such a rite is a ritual known as

“Drawing Down the Moon,” in which priestesses take on an aspect of the triple Goddess: the

Maiden, the Mother, or the Crone. In some versions of this rite, ritual participants then, one by one, approach one of these priestesses seeking blessing and advice. I have seen rituals of this type performed often, most memorably by the Chicago group Moonbeats, which I was involved with between 1996 and 1999. The group performed this rite at Lothlorien, a nature sanctuary in

Indiana home to several annual Pagan festivals. At night, group members who would enact certain ritual scenes led participants on a path through the dark woods, until they reached a hidden grove where the three priestesses were waiting to receive them. After their experience with one of the priestesses, they would then be welcomed back into the community by other group members. This type of rite, in which participants seek communion with ritualists who represent deities or other “higher” beings, is particularly associated with rites of passage in which an initiate pursues knowledge and a new level of awareness from those “above” him. The actual and metaphorical journey of the initiate is also an essential part of rites like the Drawing

Down the Moon ritual.

Yet, the practice of aspecting raises many issues within the magickal community. One instance in which this axiom is essentially true is in the act of invocation. According to

Starhawk, “[t]o invoke the Goddess is to awaken the Goddess within, to become, for a time, that aspect we invoke. An invocation channels power through a visualized image of Divinity”

(Spiral Dance 99 ). When I was first exposed to aspecting, I was amazed at the ability of my more experienced colleagues to “go under” and bring forth incredible changes in personality,

266 behavior, and even physicality. They attempted to train me in this technique but I was

constantly thinking, “Am I gone? Is the god here yet?” and though I met with a modest amount

of success, I never felt like I was able to fully “become” this figure. However, in later years, I

had discovered that I had gone about it all wrong. I was still expecting that something would

fully take over my consciousness, not realizing that trance possession has several levels of

engagement and not every case is one of full possession. That misunderstanding, combined with

the fact that, as Magliocco reports, “those who tend to be analytical, critical thinkers have

difficulty achieving this state,” made aspecting a difficult challenge for me. However, my acting

background certainly helped as I began to approach aspecting as a sort of “not me, but not-not-

me” situation.

In the notes to the 1999 edition of The Spiral Dance , Starhawk cites four stages of trance possession according to Judy Harrow and Mevlannen Beshderen. These stages are enhancement, a heightening of the senses and creativity within ritual; inspiration, in which external forces are moving through you, guiding your hand; integration, in which the divine force is at one with the celebrant; and finally possession itself, a complete taking over of the celebrant in which the celebrant’s ego disappears entirely. 6 Starhawk tells us that a good ritual will almost always include elements of the first two. However, integration can lead to “self-inflation,” and possession is the most dangerous. Without the proper safeguards and foundations, the Western celebrant, ironically, must have a highly developed sense of self. Without “firm ego boundaries,” the inexperienced celebrant may “inadvertently achieve fragmentation and disintegration.

Traditional ritualists, as in Yoruba-based religions or Balinese trance dance, have these elaborate

6 Similarly, Reclaiming Collective distinguishes between full-blown possession and “shadowing,” which Magliocco describes as “a lighter form of possession in which individual consciousness hovers around the edges as the host opens herself to the deity” ( Witching Culture 174).

267 safeguards and cultural boundaries ( Spiral Dance 1999, 272-3). In the case of the Hermetic

Order of Chicago, the priest and priestess of the ritual would invoke the divine forces, but would very rarely lose themselves. Rather, they would usually be fully aware of their own identity and the practicalities of the rite.

Althea Northage-Orr, the elder of the Hermetic Order who would most often aspect a goddess-form, spoke of how she attempts “to maintain a dual consciousness, so divine consciousness is present simultaneously with your own consciousness”; a version of Harrow and

Beshderen’s integration. 7 Yet, she also feels that completely losing consciousness is a result of inexperience, that the ritualist who “blacks out” has not developed a strong enough sense of self to maintain the dual consciousness. Speaking from personal experience, Northage-Orr also warns that aspecting novices often feel such a strong contrast between their own egos and the expanded sense of deity they take on, that they may experience an “emotional backlash” and even self-loathing. 8 As Northage-Orr explains, the subject who is initiated into the secret group or magical order certainly experiences some of this negation of the self. The magical mystic, however, learns through time and experience to work in the double sense with both self and divine co-existing. This doubleness, according to Northage-Orr, involves “setting your normal self slightly to the side, observing.” While in aspect, a ritualist has “access to knowledge, memory, things that they wouldn’t in their normal self.” At the same time, he or she is able to stay conscious enough to attend to the practicalities of ritual. For instance, in rites for the

7 Personal interview 19 July, 2001.

8 Northage-Orr may be revealing her Catholic background here, as the writings of Christian mystics are often filled with expressions of passivity, and some were so overwhelmed by God’s presence that they felt themselves to be lower than low, not worthy of the divine presence. See Michel de Certeau’s essay, “The Institution of Rot” ( Heterologies 35-46).

268 Hermetic Order of Chicago, the attending ritualists--often Althea and her husband John,

sometimes others--would take on the aspect of the Egyptian gods Sekhmet and P’tah, and other

times Hera and Zeus. While within these aspects, however, they also have to conduct the rite,

which could involve performing blessings on ritual participants, leading a chant, or initiating

some physical action like passing a cup, anointing with oil, or distributing materials for

spellwork. Just as actors have to remember physical actions onstage, these ritualists must have

control over both the divine world and the mundane world.

Clearly, this kind of possession has its power issues. A common danger is that an elitism may develop among those who “speak for the goddess.” Further, conflicts over authenticity may arise if participants suspect that a priestess’s pronouncements may be politically or personally motivated, rather than spiritually, an issue that arose more than once in the various groups I worked with (Magliocco, Witching Culture 175). Starhawk warns her readers about this very subject:

Aspecting . . . is one magical technique that really must be learned live, not from books

but from personal instruction. And while it can be an illuminating and mind-altering

experience for the person who does it, it’s not always the most empowering form of ritual

for everyone else. Information received while “aspecting” must be as carefully evaluated

as any other kind of information. Even if “the Goddess says” to do something, we need

to consider carefully the ethics and consequences with our conscious, rational minds. If

we take the information or advice given by the aspect as Goddess Gospel, then ritual

becomes disempowering and borders on a kind of Pagan fundamentalism. The vessel is

not the voice, and every voice colors the message with its own perceptions, flaws, and

emotions. ( Spiral Dance 273)

269 Here, Starhawk significantly critiques claims to hidden power typical to occult hierarchy. As

we have seen with the Golden Dawn and the Theosophical Society, disputes have often arisen in occult groups because individuals claimed to have contact with higher entities (like the Secret

Chiefs or the Mahatmas), thus justifying actions like establishing and disbanding temples, power grabs, and schisms. Starhawk’s comments, along with much anecdotal evidence, demonstrate that contemporary occultism and Paganism are not free of these issues. Furthermore, conflicts over power also manifest in ritual space itself, even through the use of mythology as a narrative template for ritual.

Re-Inventing the Wheel (of the Year)

While occult groups utilize initiation rites to transmit knowledge and practice to their members, public rituals are also scenes of general instruction that provide members with the means to communally create and enact their own spiritual practice while welcoming newcomers.

Therefore, public rites may also have an initiatory quality that creates an enclosed space with which to safely challenge the individual while still dramatizing both the internal and external struggles of following a spiritual path. Within traditional Pagan practice, borrowing richly from

Frazer’s Golden Bough and other sources this drama is usually presented as a year-long narrative that takes on slightly different tones depending on the time of year that the ritual is held. Pagans tend to follow an eight festival cycle known in Wiccan practice as the Wheel of the Year. These festivals, known as “sabbats” in witchcraft, follow an astronomical calendar of equinoxes and solstices, along with four festivals borrowed from Celtic cultures, Imbolc (1 Feb.), Beltane (1

May), Lughnasadh (1 Aug.), and Samhain (1 Nov.). 9

270 This narrative inevitably turns on tropes of planting, harvesting, fertility and sacrifice,

allowing Pagans to incorporate life lessons into this festival cycle. For instance, at the harvest

festivals of Lughnasadh and Fall Equinox (also known as Mabon in various Pagan traditions), practitioners tend to focus on notions of sacrifice, using Frazer’s image of John Barleycorn or the

Wicker Man as symbols for cutting away what the participant no longer needs. Similarly, planting seeds as symbols of desired goals is prevalent at Spring Equinox, while Samhain, a festival roughly analogous to Halloween and All Souls Day, is specifically a festival honoring ancestors and the dead, just as the harvest ends and the old year “dies.” While every group tends to treat this festival cycle in its own unique ways, the Hermetic Order of Chicago approached the cycle quite dramatically. For any given year, the elders of the group would choose a couple, often married but sometimes not, to represent the god and goddess force throughout the year.

Notably, these performers were most often referred to as King and Queen. This was a powerful, yet highly problematic, method for actualizing the Wheel of the Year narrative, itself a highly inconsistent interpretation of divine and human roles on a cosmic level. Due to the lack of a monolithic text, Pagans attempt to condense and synthesize various, often conflicting, mythological stories and cycles from many different cultural traditions, in an effort to define the roles of masculine and feminine force in the universe. In one story, for instance, an interpretation of a solar deity myth, the god is born at Winter Solstice, just as the solar day begins to lengthen, reaches young manhood at Spring Equinox, is crowned king at Summer Solstice, and is sacrificed at the Fall Equinox. Practitioners might attempt to synthesize this narrative with a

9 As with many occult traditions, these festivals are considered “ancient,” even though very little evidence exists of their practice prior to the medieval era. Also, the celebration of equinoxes and solstices as festivals is an even more recent addition. See Ronald Hutton, Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).

271 goddess-oriented cycle, in which the mother recovers from childbirth at Imbolc, essentially regaining her maidenhood, ritually joins with the king on the fertility festival of Beltane, presides over the sacrifice of the king and then joins him in the underworld at Samhain. The Hermetic

Order of Chicago would attempt such a synthesis, culminating in a Samhain enactment of the

Greek story of Persephone, the basis for the Eleusinian mystery school in ancient Greece. But even here, Pagan practice revels in an excess of story and performance. For instance, while the

Hermetic Order enacted the birth of the solar king at Yule (Winter Solstice), they would often enact the classic agon between the old year and the new year, represented in British folklore as the Oak King and the Holly King. 10 Similarly, the notion that the year follows a movement of three female archetypes, maiden, mother, and crone (maiden in the spring, mother at summer and

Crone at Samhain), is enacted alongside of the previously mentioned goddess narrative. Any attempt at synthesizing all these stories into a single metanarrative would be awkward at best.

Therefore, a diversity of narratives is celebrated in Pagan practice.

This diversity also points to a central tenet of Pagan mythic narratives. Unlike orthodox interpretations of Biblical or Koranic texts, these stories do not necessarily determine Pagan practice. Rather, they are archetypal templates for exploring psychological and emotional processes and community conflicts. For example, the Hermetic Order’s practice of choosing a king and queen for the year, who are essentially the hero and heroine of the myth cycle, would often create powerful experiences for the couples involved, and these experiences tended to reflect into the community. Group members would also mention to me that they might see their personal challenges reflected in the main drama that the “royal couple” was enacting. Thus, the

10 This performance was mostly for the children of the community who would attack the defeated Holly King with toy swords.

272 personalities and problems of that year’s couple would likely influence the character and mood of rituals and even resonate beyond ritual space to impact the community as a whole. This was demonstrated dramatically for me in my first year with the Hermetic Order. That year, the chosen couple had experienced personal problems with their relationship that had become evident by Samhain, when it came time to enact the Persephone myth. The story, in which

Persephone must join Hades, the god of the underworld, would often prove challenging for the women involved, not the least because the narrative involves the heroine, Persephone, submitting to the will of her father, Zeus, and uncle/lover Hades, who was always portrayed by the king of that year. Although this submission can easily be interpreted as a regressive capitulation to patriarchal power, the Order members tended to view the act as rather a surrender to the ritual process itself. During the public performance of the rite that year, in an unplanned moment, the

“Queen” initially refused to join the “King” in the underworld, feeling that the scene should have been one of seduction. The other members of the ritual drama had to work much harder to convince her to make the move. The elders were markedly incensed at an action they perceived to be selfish and attention-getting, while the woman in question felt justified in resisting a problematic ritual process. At stake here was a conflict over the essential meaning of the myth and its purpose within the psychological process of the Wheel of the Year narrative. This myth continued to be problematic as disagreements arose about Persephone’s agency in this story

(some argued that the main goddess figure should be Persephone’s mother, Demeter), and whether or not Persephone’s abduction was a rape or a willing concession to Hades. As far as that year’s Queen was concerned, further conflicts led to her eventually departing the group.

Around the same time, a small fire had erupted on the elders’ private land that the group would use for outdoor rituals, and to which the crowned couple would pledge themselves as both actual

273 and metaphorical stewards. The members of the group immediately interpreted this event as

an outward, physical manifestation of the problems that had occurred that year between the main

couple.

This was a typical pattern within the Hermetic Order’s practice of crowning a couple for

a year. While the king and queen metaphor was apt for the narrative cycle, the roles certainly did

not imply any secular authority, as the elders would still make final decisions about policies and

rituals. Rather, the king and queen of the year tended to set the tone for the group through shows

of enthusiasm, by offering ritual ideas, by acting as strong emotional support for the other

members, or by simply maintaining a strong presence throughout the year’s rites. Sometimes

rituals were tailored to meet the needs and address the issues of a particular king or queen. For

instance, one year, a particularly physically challenging “sacrifice” was planned for the king at

Fall Equinox, as the other members felt that the man in the king role needed to be shocked out of

complacency. 11 My wife and I similarly fulfilled the king and queen roles and faced the inherent challenges that such a thorough process would illuminate throughout the year, both in our individual lives and our lives as a couple, as well as in the community. 12 While challenging conflicts would often arise, this was an understandable, and sometimes welcome, part of the

11 During this particular rite, the king was wrapped in a sheet, dowsed with water, and suspended from a tree, in a performative reference to the myth of the god Odin who hanged from a tree to achieve wisdom. Though in previous years, the “sacrifice” of the king was merely symbolic, the elders had determined that year that the king needed an actual physical challenge.

12 Indeed, the year that my wife and I served as king and queen challenged the group on issues of sexuality, exclusivity, power and authority, to the extent that irreconcilable rifts occurred between the elders and other individuals who were perceived as disputing the elders’ authority. For these and other reasons, John Northage and Althea Northage-Orr, the group leaders, severed their ties to the Hermetic Order, and at the next formal meeting, the remaining members voted to disband. If my comments seem at all elusive, it is because this situation is still quite a sensitive one among the Hermetic Order’s former members, and I do not wish to misrepresent others’ positions and inappropriately discuss my and others’ highly personal feelings.

274 ritual process. For magickal practitioners, ritual is not a polished performance. Rather it is, as

Ronald Grimes argues, a negotiation, “something we fight over, fight with, and fight for. It is a political act requiring the exercise of judgment and the use of power.” But it is also “a tool for forging consensus and eliciting cooperation” ( Marrying 5). Thus, for Pagan practitioners, the mythic cycle is a potent stage for ritual performances that act as efficacious process for the spiritual, psychological and emotional growth of the participants.

Though rituals have their structured, bounded form, the work of the rite often extends into the outer frame of social gathering, beginning when people walk through the door. Pagan ritual events may be followed by celebrations consisting of communal eating and drinking, sometimes with music or drumming, or other forms of participatory entertainment like singing or storytelling. Yet, as in the example of the king and queen performances, the work of the ritual does not even end after the social gathering ends. The process continues for many individuals for months, maybe even years to come, as they may choose to record their experience and attempt to integrate what they have learned into their daily life. This work may also continue in other rites throughout the individual’s lifetime. Narrative plays a crucial role here as members interpret events and processes as scenes in an extended drama, in an attempt to create coherence.

Therefore, as Ronald Grimes contends, rituals, especially rites of passage, cannot be considered in isolation from each other. One ritual process bleeds into another ( Marrying 12-13). And as

Grimes further establishes, narratives about a given rite may be as important as the rite itself:

“Sometimes the telling and retelling become extensions of the rite itself, stretching it from the original performance in the past until it touches and transforms the present. On the one hand, narratives can render rites even more meaningful than they were in the actual moment of their performance. On the other, they can downplay a rite’s original significance” ( Deeply 10). In the

275 case of the Hermetic Order, narratives about a given year certainly shaped interpretations about the success or failure of a set of rites. In years of significant conflict, certain aspects of the narrative dominated based on who was telling the story, either maintaining the hierarchy of the group, or in some cases, undermining it. To further illustrate the importance of seasonal mythology as a template for ritual action, I will more closely investigate the festival of Samhain, which will serve as a backdrop for examining several performative moves.

When the Veils are Thin: A Chicago Samhain Rite

Samhain (pronounced Sow-en), the Irish name for the month of November, meaning

“summer’s end,” serves as an example of cross-cultural celebrations of harvest. Samhain is the end of harvest, the beginning of a new year and a day for remembering the dead.13 This festival’s agrarian association provides the metaphorical template for individuals and communities who wish to gather their emotional, psychological, and spiritual resources in preparation for winter, a season Pagans correlate with rest, renewal, and internal work. The holiday’s association with honoring the dead also provides the particular character of its celebration. Since Pagans also correlate winter with death and the mythic notion of a journey to the underworld, stories like the

Eleusinian mystery of Persephone and Hades seem to pervade at this time. Because of its association with death and ultimate mystery, the celebration of Samhain tends to be a profound experience for practitioners. One of the most salient aspects of Samhain is its negotiation between the living and the dead, between present celebrants and ancestors. At a typical public

Samhain rite, the celebrants will emphasize the notion that Samhain is a time when the “veils

13 Samhain is considered the pre-cursor to Halloween and other Christian holidays, such as All Souls or All Saints Day, and is associated with the Mexican Day of the Dead, Guy Fawkes Day and others.

276 between the worlds” are thinnest and discourse between the living and the dead is easiest. 14

The celebration of Samhain by modern Pagans is an imaginative borrowing from Irish folk culture, lending a particularly tricky and amorphous air to the proceedings, as stories of elision between the worlds of mortals and the mysterious, sometimes dangerous, faerie realms frequently deal with the erasing of boundaries. 15 The fact that the “veils are thin” is often repeated at Pagan ritual, especially at this particular time of year, is certainly significant, as it points to other thin veils in occult theory, especially that between trickery and authenticity. Such blurred boundaries are essential to a theory of magic that engages the micropolitics enacted within Pagan ritual.

The thin veils are not only significant because of Celtic roots, but also because of

Samhain’s association with Halloween. Jack Santino has noted that the history of Halloween

“indicates many changes in the political realities and social dynamics” in many Western countries over the centuries (xvii). In dealing with the holiday, Santino argues for the importance of individual memory and experience and its relation to broader historical, cultural, and social currents. Similarly, folklorist Leila Dudley Edwards applies these principles to Pagan celebration of Samhain, arguing that it “provides an opportunity for people to process these feelings [of loss

14 Much of the specific references in this section are to a ritual held by a group who was a precursor to Moonbeats, at Samhain of 1996, held on the campus of Northwestern University. However, this rite shares much in general with other typical Samhain rites and I have included insights and observations from these other rites as well.

15 In Irish folk belief, this discourse takes on added significance since the spirits of the dead are often conflated with the Tuatha de Danaan, the faery folk who are said to have been the former inhabitants of Ireland. According to myth, when the Milesians, the forefathers of the modern Irish, vanquished the Tuatha, they were forced underground, sacrificing their materiality in the underworld. Faerie mounds are common landmarks in Ireland, and it is no wonder that these invisible folk would commune with the buried dead, since they shared a common space. Such an elision is also indicative of Irish myth in general, in which the boundary between gods, mortals, and spirits is usually fluid. This confluence points to a significant difference between the Celtic relation of mythology and history to other Indo-European traditions: the Celts regarded their gods and goddesses as ancestors, not creators (Ellis 115).

277 and death], to experience the ‘underworld journey’ and through its experience obtain greater

strength and knowledge of self” (236). Accordingly, Samhain rites often contain various methods

for processing feelings around death. The Hermetic Order would usually create a spirit tree, in

which participants would write the name of someone deceased on a ribbon and tie it to a branch,

similar to the use of wish ribbons at Irish holy wells. Other techniques may include a guided

meditation in which participants visualize communing with lost loved ones. At one particular

Samhain rite in 1996, facilitated by members of a short-lived Pagan group in Chicago, the

priestess guided participants to imagine meeting their deceased relatives, friends, or pets on the

far side of a misty bridge. As Matthew Ellenwood, the presiding ritualist, explained in his

introduction to the rite, “It is the beginning of the Celtic New Year and the end of the old. The

last fruits of the harvest have been collected, and we are preparing for winter, deciding what we

will take with us into hibernation and banishing what we do not need. Now is the time of

darkness, when we enter into the dark half of the year.” At this transitional and liminal time,

boundaries are blurred and concrete reality is not so solid. Existence is nebulous, and magic is

ubiquitous. The light of the year is dying only to be reborn on Yule, the Winter Solstice.

At a crucial point in this rite, the priest demonstrated this concept by extinguishing the candle representing the old year, and then lighting it again by another candle representing the power of the goddess (read: nature, Mother Earth). Thus time has been transformed from old to new, in the ancient agon between young hero and old hero. This act was central to the ritual not only because of its link with Irish mytho-poetic history, but also because of the method by which it was performed. After extinguishing the first candle, the priest held another lit candle in the smoke of the first candle. As if by magic, the first candle lit up again on its own. During this

“magical” action, the priest explained what he was doing, linking his action to the Irish tradition

278 of lighting fires at important festivals. 16 This old parlor trick and children’s game could be

easily explained by a cursory knowledge of physics. However, the action’s effect is as a trick, a

skilled performance conflated with magical practice, in which stage illusion is mistaken for

magic, and vice versa. Indeed, Ellenwood did have training as a stage magician and also used

flash paper, a typical stage magician prop, in this ritual and others. 17 For instance, one of the

central magickal acts of the 1996 ritual called for participants to write their fears and worries for

the year on strips of paper, speak them aloud if desired, and then burn them in the lit cauldron in

the center of the room. The strips of paper were in fact flash paper, so that when participants

burned them, the paper would disappear into thin air with a bright flash. With the use of flash

paper, the participants would visibly see their worries disappear in the flames, as if by “magic.”

This action visually and emotionally cues participants to expect success in banishing their fears.

After speaking with several attendees of this rite, it was clear that the general reaction to

these performative moves was mixed. Some of the more experienced members of the group saw

the candle trick and use of flash paper as mere show that compromised the power being invoked,

while for others it was a defining moment of the ritual, in which the sense of mystery lent a

16 Lighting fires is a large part of the history of Celtic celebrations. In fact, the major holidays of the Celtic calendar, including Samhain and Beltaine, are referred to as Fire Holidays, in reference to the traditional lighting of fires on the sacred hill of Tara, the spiritual center of Ireland. It is this site which is the setting for the tale that The Tripartite Life of Patrick tells about Druids lighting their fires on May 1 st as St. Patrick attempts to compete with his own Easter fires on a neighboring hill (Ellis 76). For more contemporary practices, see Jack Santino, The Hallowed Eve: Dimensions of Culture in a Calendar Festival in Northern Ireland (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1998).

17 Ellenwood has noted in conversation the influence of Jeff “Magnus” McBride, a Vegas stage magician who often explains the ritualistic origins of commonly known stage tricks. For instance, sawing a person in half and rejoining them has its roots in ceremonies surrounding the death and resurrection of Osiris. Accordingly, McBride considers the performance of stage magic akin to a mystery school in which ancient secrets are passed down and demonstrated through illusion and magical acts. In fact, McBride runs “The Mystery School of Magic,” a yearly conference for the advanced study of magical arts.

279 certain atmosphere to the proceedings. Shelley, a first time ritualist who had attended the rite, was of the latter opinion. Her participation had been predicated on a search for self-awareness,

“broadening of horizons,” positive energy, and a sense of belonging, rather than for worship per se. But the candle trick showed her that “something more might be involved.” 18 Stage magicians like Matthew Ellenwood and Magnus McBride acknowledge that this openness to “something more” is key to entertaining audiences with stage illusions. Yet, as I presented this story to the more experienced Fellowship members who disagreed on the efficacy of the trick, one member,

Nyteshade, reminded us that the true magic was not the candle trick, but the transformation of the newcomer’s expectations. The candle trick, itself an example of a tactic modeled from mythology, a discourse in which “[m]oves not truths are recounted” (Certeau, Heterologies 23), enacts an intricate theory of reimagining from a distance, manifestation and action through mystery, a potentially transformative fire ignited as if by magic.

It is this space of the as if, the gap between the flame and the smoke, which holds the secret of Pagan ritual and the thin veil between theory and practice. This space, in which participants may allow themselves to be carried away by the moment, even if they do not really

“believe” in magic, points to Michael Taussig’s concept of mimetic excess in which “mimesis is an end in itself that takes one into the magical power of the signifier to act as if it were indeed the real, to live in a different way with the understanding that artifice is natural, no less than nature is historicized” ( Mimesis 255). The mixture of skepticism and belief is a major part of how occultism functions, with the dialectic of concealment and revelation constantly in play. In the case of aspecting, a spirit or a pagan deity may be treated “as if” it had an external, “real”

18 Personal interview, 2 Nov 1996.

280 existence, regardless of belief. In ritual magic, mimetic excess, in a sense, overwhelms belief so that the participant invokes and acts upon forces that may or may not be psychological, but seem to be involved in the magical act. Indeed this so-called “magic trick” participates in the complex dialectic of concealment and revelation essential to magical practice and occult theory.

As Taussig is fond of repeating, the trick is made even more efficacious in its revelation as trick.

When I explained to the participant that the trick was simple physics, she was not bothered. For her, the effect was the same.

At rituals such as these, especially on a night as culturally charged as Halloween, participants are cued to expect the unexpected, read multiple meanings in symbols and actions, and dance along the thin edge of magic. This kind of magical thinking, described by Tanya

Luhrmann as “a conflation of self and world, the collapse of a thin divide which separates subjectivity from an objective world” is certainly at home at a ritual when the “veils are thin.”

(165). In ritual space, “the line between the performative world and ordinary mundane world is fine or non-existent” (Myerhoff 247). Candles, incense, elaborate costumes or masks, chants and invocations, all contribute to the charged atmosphere. Casting the circle certainly indicates to everyone that what happens in this space is separate from the mundane. Additionally, invocations to the elements, the deities, and the ancestors are invitations to hidden forces to witness and participate. At this particular Samhain rite, the priestess took a broom, a symbol culturally charged with witchcraft associations, and symbolically swept away negative aspects that the participants called out. As the banishing proceeded, the door to the room, which had been slightly ajar to welcome passers-by, abruptly closed. This somewhat ominous moment set the stage for a ritual celebrating just such strangeness and uncertainty.

281 Yet, despite the indeterminacy of the season and the mystery of magic, the framework for rites such as these is ultimately one of community and the individual’s connection to community. The 1996 Samhain rite was certainly framed by these concerns, since one of the first things that occurred in sacred space was a round robin introduction of everyone present, and one of the last was the use of the Spiral Dance. This practice, a Pagan tradition since the 1970s, is particularly paradigmatic with respect to community, because, as a symbol and a practice, it determines how practitioners deal with the Other in relation to the self. Starhawk, one of the primary proponents of the political and psychological aspects of Paganism and a central figure in the neopagan movement from the late 1970’s to the present, bases her foundational work, The

Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Goddess Traditions, on this ritual movement as a metaphor for social and political action. 19 Indeed, she has often used the dance itself as a way to bring together community and raise energy for political protests ( Dreaming 154-180).

Practitioners I have spoken with have speculated that the dance may have originated in ancient

Greek practices involving walking a labyrinth as a meditative tool. The dance represents at once a journey to the Underworld, the waxing and waning of the moon, the coils of a serpent, the inner folds of the brain, sometimes referred to as the walk of the ancestors. Participants link hands and walk in a spiral pattern that facilitates a crucial moment in which each celebrant stares into the eyes of the person facing him or her (though in some versions the people greet each other with a kiss on the cheek). At a time determined by the rhythm of the group, the participants would move on, and face the next person. This confrontation is not aggressive, but rather a moment of understanding, in which friendships can be formed, tensions can be relaxed, or past

19 Feminist theorist Donna Haraway has also used the Spiral Dance as a primary socio-political metaphor in her famous “Cyborg Manifesto” (181).

282 life relationships can be discovered. Spiral dances can be slow and intense, like the one at the 1996 Samhain rite, or become increasingly frenetic and wild, depending on the rhythm of the group, sometimes urged on by drumming. Particular to the ritual’s relation to Halloween, this moment involves a play of masks. The point of this confrontation, according to Ellenwood, is not only to see into others, but also to be aware of one’s own masks, and to what extent that mask is maintained or dropped. This intense act of self-revelation, in which participants gaze into each other’s eyes, proved uncomfortable for some members of the group who had earlier expressed consternation over the dance and were wary of scrutiny. Indeed, a few of the newer participants refused to make eye contact, or chose not to linger for very long.

In discussing the rite afterwards with participants, some found the dance more meaningful with people they did not know, due to a lack of preconceived notions, while others found the contact more intense with those they did know, because of the difficulty of keeping up a mask with friends. Many times since, with other groups and rituals, I have experienced the dance as more casual, friendly, and playful, more of a general affirmation of community.

However, I recall that this enactment of the Spiral Dance was particularly intense, with many of my interactions with others feeling more focused and “meaningful” within individual interactions. In this situation, the dance can be an overwhelming and intense experience, with its intimate contact and strong sense of energy. 20 More than just playing on the concept of the eyes as the window of the soul, the Spiral Dance in this context essentially becomes a direct

20 Even though I am experienced participator and facilitator of these types of rituals, especially the spiral dance, I am still susceptible to its power. In a Samhain rite performed by many of the same people two years later, I was feeling particularly ill and the energy from the dance made me nearly black out, and I had to remove myself. Perhaps it was the particular group of people involved, or the fact that we did the dance on Samhain, rather than Beltane or Yule, holidays that are more ribald and celebratory than Samhain, that determined such different experiences.

283 confrontation of otherness, in which others are faced as separate beings but acknowledged as interconnected. This is not a universalism in which differences are erased. The dance is indicative of a general mode of thought in Paganism that plays on a dialectic between otherness and connection. Even though the Pagan community sees itself as different from the rest of the world, their primary philosophy involves an understanding of “connection,” in which all elements fuse together to create both the known and unknown universe. The movement of the

Spiral Dance itself illustrates the flow of “spiral energy,” which Starhawk characterizes as

“movement toward greater freedom usually followed by movement toward greater security”(143). Ultimately, the dance not only performatively actualizes what is perceived by

Pagans to be the movement of the universe, but it also becomes an active metaphor for the pagan community, in which fluctuation is a part of the process. People weave in and out of each other’s lives, giving and taking, participating in a particular flow that defines the community.

Indeed, the Spiral Dance becomes an essential tool to know the self and others. This tool is nowhere more important than in the Samhain celebration, one of the most important, intense and intimate times for Pagan practitioners. The tight sense of communion demonstrated by the

Spiral Dance involves the larger community of the dead. These ancestors are not just actual dead spirits, but memories of events, cultural heritages, and other connections to the past. Movements like the Spiral Dance enact and perform this art of memory, becoming a sort of pedagogy through which the practitioner hones his or her craft. Ellenwood adamantly posits Paganism as an entirely participatory religion based on physical action and movement. In his rituals, there are no bystanders. He insists, “if you involve people physically, they’ll remember more. Paganism is more effective because it is a participatory faith, where you don’t just sit and absorb. You

284 activate.” 21 Thus, magical objects like tools, costumes, and other correspondences between concepts, gestures, and symbols are essential for training the novice’s mind, so that she will learn to make the connections for herself, even if these trappings are ultimately unnecessary for successful magic.

This network of learning and performance is undoubtedly an example of Joseph Roach’s concept of performance genealogies that:

draw on the idea of expressive movements as mnemonic reserves, including patterned

movements made and remembered by bodies, residual movements retained implicitly in

images or words (or in the silences between them), and imaginary movements dreamed in

minds, not prior to language but constitutive of it, a psychic rehearsal for physical actions

drawn from a repertoire that culture provides. (26)

Here, Roach’s concept can encompass both the communal nature of Pagan ritual and the performativity of the magical act. According to this term, performances highly informed by individual experience and memory establish collective identity. Like many of the festivals and rituals Roach investigates in New Orleans, the channel through which this process is mediated usually engages the spirits of the dead, just as Samhain rites do. In this space, practitioners create community, produce magick, and invoke the gods of their myths as well as the ancestors of their past.

More importantly, Roach’s work points to the process of genealogy, influenced by his reading of Foucault. For Roach, this genealogy of performance is complicated and fraught with issues of origin, authenticity, miscegenation, and cultural confusion that display “an intricate

21 These notions of participatory faith recall distinctions made in early anthropology between “transcendent religion” and “primitive religion” predicated on identification and participation and “acting out” (Styers 95).

285 unraveling of the putative seamlessness of origins” (24). Like Roach’s circum-Atlantic New

Orleans, contemporary Pagan practice is caught up in the impossibility of origins, as we have seen. Debates over authenticity and historical accuracy are so much a part of Paganism that they even seem to empower it to some degree, since the lack of evidence on these subjects makes it accessible to almost anyone. In fact, one of the most popular strains of Paganism in the West

(and also the tradition used most prevalently in the aforementioned ritual) is often one of the most problematic, that is, Celtic Paganism, sometimes known as the Faerie Faith. Indeed, Celtic belief in particular appeals to what Marion Bowman has called “Cardiac Celts”: Pagan practitioners who may not be able to claim exact historical accuracy, but feel their practices are authentic to a Celtic spirit appropriate to modern times. Celtic belief appeals to Ellenwood, who does have Irish ancestry, because of the ambivalent nature of its mythology. He prefers Celtic mythology and its nebulous action that consists of slippery boundaries and thin veils to what he sees as the concrete binaries of Hellenic myth. He cites the historical tendency for Celtic peoples to respect and understand the beliefs and practices with which they came into contact. Yet, this romantic association is not without its controversy. For instance, Celtic scholar and practitioner

Alexei Kondratiev compares the image of the Celt with the Native American, in which the Celt is the Other in European history, suffering from comparable cultural projections ranging from the bloodthirsty heathen to the romantic, noble savage. Further, like the classic American Indian, the

Celt is relegated to the past in spite of the fact that Celts still exist (Hopman and Bond 32-3).

Kondratiev urges practitioners to recognize that Celtic peoples “are a real culture, a real people, with their own destiny, history, and identity, whose traditions belong to them.” Yet, he does not limit the possibilities of participating in these Celtic traditions, suggesting “If you learn enough about them that you can become one of them, then you have a right to say you are an exponent of

286 those traditions” (33). But he warns that the curious must make an effort to understand and respect the actual Celtic peoples who exist today, rather than greedily consuming the culture. 22

These issues of identity and ethnicity are pervasive throughout Pagan practice, symptomatic of the contested origins of the various traditions. In her ethnography, Earthly

Bodies, Magical Selves: Contemporary Pagans and the Search for Community , Sarah Pike devotes an entire chapter to this subject entitled “Blood That Matters: Neopagan Borrowing.” In this chapter, Pike addresses the controversy over white European-Americans adopting Native

American and Afro-Caribbean practices, like Santeria, Vodoun, and Ifa. She presents how practitioners use narratives to justify their cultural appropriations. Many of these practitioners explain their choices with stories of visions, past lives, a sense of “being called” by a particular deity, or that a particular tradition simply had a strong resonance for them. 23 Yet, Pike argues,

“all of their explanations are based on the conviction that what is at stake are the personal meanings derived from these practices and the extent to which they enrich individual lives”

(140). After presenting the strong arguments that critics make descrying these appropriations, she concludes, “copying the other in appearance or through ritual practice is part of the improvisational process neopagans [sic] engage in as they create themselves and their communities. The identities that they define for themselves challenge as well as express the ambivalence about race and ethnicity that they share with many other Americans” (152). This

22 Similarly, Solfinna, a practitioner of Norse traditions, wishes to differentiate between her more hereditary tradition and those who model their practice after the 19 th century Pan-Germanic movement. Solfinna implicates this nationalist movement with the writings of 17 th century supremacist Guido Von List, whose work fueled much of the Nazi party’s use of Germanic myth and runes (Hopman and Bond 95-7).

287 ambivalence is demonstrated even within the Pagan communities that attend the festivals that

are the subject of Pike’s ethnography. I have witnessed and participated in many debates on this

topic, especially at festivals like Starwood, where a Vodoun rite is among the yearly large group

rituals and the majority of the participants are European-Americans.

Practices like adapting an imagined ancestry are intricately related to surrogation,

described by Roach as the process by which culture reproduces and re-creates itself. He states,

“In the life of the community, the process of surrogation does not begin or end but continues as

actual or perceived vacancies occur in the network of relations that constitute the social fabric”

(2). This process is never exact and hardly ever succeeds despite its continuation. Within Pagan

ritual, the newly established cultural identity becomes a synecdoche for a tribal group whose

origins are impossible to trace. Nevertheless, this new identity can be seen as another tool for

creating difference. Ellenwood explains taking on an imagined identity as a method for removing

mundane personality: “It is our way of saying [during ritual] we are not everyday people.”

However, rarely within a rite do all the participants adhere to the same tradition in their personal

practice, even if the rite itself focuses on the methods of one tradition. Thus, regardless of

heritage, the members of a Pagan circle can engage in common practice, and become what

Foucault has termed a “heterotopia” by virtue of a dialectic of difference within the circle

(“Other Spaces” 22). This synthesis becomes most prevalent in performances like the Spiral

Dance, in which otherness may be confronted with understanding and respect, and boundaries

remain blurred. Further, at festivals, attendees subscribe to a vast eclecticism of beliefs and

practices, yet are able to speak the same language because all seem aware of each other’s notions

23 Some people have told me they incorporate Native American practices or deities into their rituals as a way to honor the spirits of this particular place. Of course, this is different from a complete adoption of a particular Native American tradition as the primary spiritual path for one’s life, which has its own implications.

288 that they can influence themselves and their surroundings through intentional acts like magic

and ritual. Particularly at festivals, this is what primarily brings together the mostly white,

European-descent Pagan practitioners and those who follow Afro-Caribbean or Native American

traditions, despite the fact that these groups have very different ideas about how they can and

should influence things.

In an attempt to identify potential heterotopias, Foucault wants to locate the “real places--

places like counter-sites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other

sites that can be found within the culture are simultaneously represented, contested, and

inverted” (24). A salient point about the heterotopia is that it can exist within a normalizing structure: a community of prisoners who play LARPs (live-action role-playing games), a performance group within a totalitarian country, or even a group of academics and students participating in Pagan rituals on a college campus, like the 1996 Samhain rite was. Heterotopias like these are “capable of juxtaposing in a single real space several spaces in themselves incompatible . . . [and] always presuppose a system of opening and closing that both isolates them and makes them penetrable” (25-26). These central tenets of the heterotopia are easily applicable to performance situations in heterogeneous spaces, like a Pagan ritual in which circles are drawn, celebrants are welcomed inside, and purification and banishing processes set the stage. The cast circle becomes a conscious energy form, creating a semi-permeable membrane that limits and protects, while at the same time providing a cue to practitioners that awareness should be shifted to a deeper, ritual mode. Yet, like Foucault’s heterotopia, this circle is penetrable, made possible by its ritualized opening and closing.

The particularities of this kind of heterotopic space had interesting effects on the participants. Various groups have used the lakefill and firepit at Northwestern University for

289 drumming and ritual activity, with surrounding groves of trees and Lake Michigan as a natural backdrop. However, Chicago weather in late October makes this less of a conducive setting, so the ritual was held indoors at a campus building. For the group performing the 1996

Samhain rite, the room was unfamiliar and the atmosphere was somewhat cold. All these factors made the ritual initially challenging, but eventually the group did adapt. For Nyteshade, the physical location ceased to matter, possibly as a result of casting the circle. Mandor stated that enclosed space “made me connect more with people and not hide. Indoors, people become primary.” Similarly, Brianna, another member of the hosting group, noted her need to attach to something organic (understandably since Paganism is often, somewhat problematically, characterized as a nature religion), and, in the absence of natural surroundings, human contact filled that gap. In fact, in our discussion, we were able to connect that sense of enclosure with the significance of Samhain itself, in which we gather our surroundings close, retreat into hibernation for winter, or into the womb.

Therefore, transformation of space, by methods such as circle casting and elemental invocation, is essential for the magic to happen. As philosopher Henri Lefebvre has argued, producing space is about transforming dominant and passively experienced space through imaginative appropriation. The transformation of the backroom of a store, a public park, a rented hall, a ritualist’s apartment, or a campus building is undoubtedly indicative of many such appropriations carried on by Pagan communities in urban settings. Lefebvre further states that ritual movements and gestures themselves transform these spaces through bodies. He claims,

“many such social spaces are given rhythm by the gestures which are produced within them and which produce them. When a gestural space comes into conjunction with a conception of the world possessed of its own symbolic system, a grand creation may result” (216). Pagan ritual

290 causes just this sort of conjunction in the space it produces. Unfortunately, these necessary moves are not without their drawbacks, as Lefebvre speculates: “One upshot of such tactics is that groups take up residence in spaces whose pre-existing form, having been designed for some other purpose, is inappropriate to the needs of their would-be communal life. One wonders whether this morphological maladaptation might not play a part in the high incidence of failure among communitarian experiments of this kind” (168). There may be something to this speculation, since many Pagan groups, including the very group that performed the 1996

Samhain rite, can have very short lives indeed.

Yet perhaps these issues are part of a growth process. This sense of transience and being

“in the moment” help develop skills of improvisation and adaptation. Heterotopia functions fully within the Pagan circle to preserve a meaning both created anew and inspired by dreams of ancient ancestry. Unsurprisingly, the actions that occur in such spaces are magical and socio- political ways in which individuals band together to affect larger forces. Recently, scholars of

Paganism have begun to write about these actions as reflections of Michel de Certeau’s “tactics.”

For instance, Sabina Magliocco emphasizes de Certeau’s focus on the individual imagination within capitalist consumerist culture and the ability of that imagination to “make do” with the fragmented elements available to the practitioner. This “bricolage” (borrowing Levi-Strauss’ term) then becomes a narrative used to resist dominant culture. Certainly, the tendency of practitioners to create the illusion of a unified narrative out of various traditions, stories about heritage, visions from “ancestors,” and personal desires for cultural otherness constitutes a particular form of cultural and spiritual bricolage. Yet, Magliocco reminds us that in the case of

Pagan ritual, “tactic is not the resistance of the class-oppressed, but the cultural play of disaffected urban intellectuals. It resists through playfulness, irony and self-reflexiveness, and

291 opens new possibilities within the dominant culture itself” (“Ritual”114). Therefore, tactic in

this context indicates a certain cultural playfulness that creates something new as spiritual

practice, subtly resisting the boundaries and binaries governing notions of self and Other, as well

as the more institutionalized social structures and actual spaces of mainstream religion.

For politically aware Pagans, like Starhawk, these magical actions influence flows of

energy that are not only emotional and spiritual, but also economic, social, and political. She

demonstrates that when magical energy is concentrated upon a common social goal, like the

closing of a nuclear power plant, rather than just on individual, personal needs, the result can be

powerful. Similarly, Ronald Grimes, in his work on ritual studies, has commented that although

both ceremony and magic commonly utilize the performative utterance, magic, “uses a

transcendent frame of reference to effect change in the ordinary reality of social and ecological

interaction” ( Beginnings 49). This frame, potentially political, uses the force of desire to influence causality. Grimes further asserts that while “ritualization seems to be uncontrolled, magic takes control by employing symbols more for their consequence than their meaning”

(Beginnings 49). Thus, ritualizations, like burning away negative qualities in the form of flash paper, are married with a strong desire for change and a frame of reference that makes change possible. Again, these ritual gestures are a major part of performance genealogies, in which tactics and actions work hand in hand with performers in a given space.

However, the actions produced in such spaces need to work across a distance and an apparent lack of logical causality. Recall Aleister Crowley’s definition of magic as “the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with will.” This apt definition points to the ability of magic to work across a distance: a gap in physical space, in logic and causality, and ultimately, a performative gap. In other words, the magician lights the candle without performing

292 the direct action that would normally result in a lit candle. The performative gap

demonstrated by the candle trick is covered over with the thin veil between the worlds. The

mystery is always what goes on behind that veil. The veil often masks the performative utterance

that somehow has the ability to reach across the veil and affect the other side. Frazer’s classic

law of sympathetic magic allows for the ability to act upon an object through a copy of that

object, such as the voodoo doll. Similarly, in contagious magic, an explicit example of

metonym, the part stands in for the whole. Thus, the nail clippings of the enemy are used to curse

him, or bless him, as the case may be. When a candle lights another candle without touching it,

the lesson is clear: explain all the physics you want; this looks like an illusion and acts like one.

Thus, the ritual participants are cued to think this way. Their expectations are such that they are

willing to accept and practice what their intellectual selves have been trained to ignore and

refute.

For many Pagan practitioners, these emotive and intuitive experiences are taken seriously alongside intellectual discourse, and they are not seen as incompatible. In the discussion after the 1996 Samhain rite, Mandor explained “magic validates our emotions, intuition, and personal experiences. It says ‘pay attention’ where society tells you not to.” The notion that these ritual participants are unaware of the contradictions and complexities of what they are doing is patently false. For me, being a participant/observer in a magical community and analyzing the activity is really no different than what many participants are already doing Participants tend to analyze and critique rituals avidly. One member of the Hermetic Order emphasized this process, but added that this only should happen after the rite is over, so the participant can fully commit herself to what is happening “in the moment” during a ritual. As a scholar utilizing ethnography, I simply have additional goals that involve writing up what I experience for an academic audience. Even

293 then, I share this tendency with other participants who may investigate ritual for other

purposes, whether they involve psychological counseling, theatrical training, or simply

intellectual curiosity. While many people attend rituals merely to observe the activities, making

no attempt to engage themselves, many other experienced participants can effectively blur the

distinction between participant and observer to the point of irrelevance. Thus, in contrast to R.R.

Marett’s infamous assertion that “savage religion is something not so much thought out as

danced out,” this religion is both danced out and thought out (qtd in Styers 86).

However, during the performance of the rite, leaving analysis aside in order to be fully present and experience the rite is key. These spontaneous moments can be quite a powerful call to action if we consider Certeau’s assertion that to make people believe is to make them act and vice versa ( Practice 148). Through tactics, individuals perform acts of poaching, subversive consumption predicated upon “a mobility that must accept the chance offerings of the moment”

(Practice 37). Therefore, practitioners use the magical frame of reference to create ritual actions based on the materials at hand. By using tactics, practitioners may create within a larger system of power (the university) something other than what the system had planned. Within this magical operation, caught up not only in issues of space, but in the creation and deployment of identity and agency, margins and centers are imploded and the boundaries are no longer clear. According to Ellenwood, ritual is an inversion of the mundane and arcane, a trope common to anthropological discourse on ritual magic. Luhrmann also points out that these techniques of difference serve to create an ideal community: “The real point of the creation of a difference, something outside the bounds of normal society, is to make the participants feel as if they are of another, different, sacred world” (232). Similarly, the Fellowship members who participated in

294 the discussion often noted how the practice of magic had indeed made them more aware of their participation in an ideal community.

Not only does magic’s ability to work across distances and veils aid in this mysterious sense of connection, but other aspects of magical practice contribute to this sense as well.

Notions like the Wiccan three-fold law, in which any action for good or evil is returned back to the doer three times, and other similar theories of karma and debt paying, are contributing factors to Pagan notions of interconnectedness. Practitioners often feel a newfound sense of responsibility and belonging, in contrast to typical societal feelings of disconnection and separateness. Thus, practitioners develop and hone their relation to others, the environment, and themselves. The notion of interconnectedness and its resulting empowerment is a common trope in discussions of individuals’ attraction to the practice of paganism and Wicca. For its practitioners, Paganism also offers an alternative to what is seen as the abstraction of humanity from nature. Nyteshade also commented that before his involvement in Paganism, he would not have seen much a connection or similarity between himself and a tree. Further, this sense of connection to nature worship and awareness ironically offers a demystification of “occult” practices performed by technology and modern living. In contrast to Theodor Adorno’s assertion that belief in the occult engenders a fascist tendency to follow hidden principles (“Theses on

Occultism”), the discussants claim that the practice of magick has made them more likely to question leaps of faith that they feel society has made for them. For example, in an intriguing counter to the “magical” phenomena of commodity fetishism, one member noted that he is more aware of where food and nourishment originate, making him think twice before mindlessly eating a steak bought in a supermarket. These ideas about the role of the individual within a

295 broader communal and environmental context are undoubtedly savvy theoretical moves that challenge previous conceptions about occultism and its role in everyday life.

The role of occultism both in everyday life and in ritual is indeed a complex one. The

Spiral Dance and the candle trick, in particular, are performative examples of a Pagan community utilizing the dialectic of contemporary occultism: otherness and connection. The implication of this dialectic, a seemingly contradictory notion, is that Pagans, particularly within the act of ritual, are beings performing in spaces that are somehow separate from “mundane” reality. The establishment of identity in the Pagan community very significantly involves a separation, an occulting or acknowledgment of difference from the rest of the world.

Consequently, a person who is capable of holding a day job and fully participating in corporate society is also able to take on a different name, wear different clothing, and perform actions based on beliefs that that very same culture would normally reject as irrational. By the same token, a mundane space in an institutionalized building can be transformed into a veil between worlds, where the spirits of the dead can be present and magic can be performed. Yet, the entire reason why the ritual is understood to “work” is contingent upon the belief that all beings and all spaces are intimately connected. These connections are sometimes explicit and visible and other times mysterious and occult. Thus, the flames of the candles are connected in invisible ways, the connection leaping over the gap in rationality. Magic, then, is what fills the performative gap, completing the circuit.

Conclusion

As ritual ends, two statements common to Pagan liturgy further recognize the occult dialectic: “The circle is open but never broken. Merry meet, merry part, and merry meet again!”

296 The paradox of the unbroken and open circle, and the movement of connection, which is at

once circular and spiral, brings participants back to where they begin, to the world they briefly

left behind. Yet, their actions, their communion, and their movements transform them.

Particularly in the rites of Samhain, they have made the archetypal journey to the underworld and

returned safely. The knowledge of this journey, and the experiences and emotions that

accompany it, will remain with them and further influence their daily lives. It is significant,

however, that such a journey is indeed both a spatial practice, a pilgrimage in which one only travels internally, and a temporal practice, predicated on a time in the calendar where internal and external space is inhabited with spirits, ancestors and gods.

This sense of ritual time/space is particularly profound in the initiation rite. Though not predicated upon any specific calendrical time, initiations may be scheduled to coincide with

“times of power” such as new moons, full moons, equinoxes and solstices, or “magical hours” that practitioners calculate based on what planet has astrological influence over a certain day or hour. Yet, with initiations the time is an “eternal now” that is also forever beginning, a liminal space/time that marks the point of transformation, a moving across the veils from death to rebirth. This chapter has demonstrated how practitioners construct a ritual process, based on seasonal and cyclical narratives, that allows them to engage in a performative experience. By witnessing and participating paradigmatic drama, complete with liturgy, chant, costumes, props, movement and gestures, ritual facilitates an embodied engagement with the magical occult principles we have been exploring, in the context of occult tradition and its concomitant historical and mythological narratives. Practitioners construct ritual space as a meaningful zone of performance and a fertile ground for personal and communal transformation.

297 Tradition, stories, and experiences invariably haunt this space, not to mention the spirits, demons, angels, elementals, and other entities that practitioners invoke. Thus, Certeau claims “[t]here is no place that is not haunted by many different spirits, hidden there in silence, spirits one can ‘invoke’ or not. Haunted places are the only ones people can live in--and this inverts the schema of the Panopticon ” ( Practice 108). Referring to Foucault’s constraining, disciplinary spaces, he offers the possibility for individuals and communities to create based on the knowledge of spiritual and imaginative practices, enacting a kind of re-enchantment. This knowledge also consists in understanding the lesson of the thin veils and that this can empower individuals to make changes in their own realities. The attempt to apply magical principles to the socio-political sphere is the subject of our next chapter.

298 Chapter Seven

“She Changes Everything She Touches”: An Occult Politics

“A Witch is a Rebel in Physicks, and a Rebel a Witch in Politicks.” - Thomas Vaughan (qtd. in Gibbons 124).

In the previous chapter, examples of ritual work and participants’ experiences of that work implied an acute awareness of how magickal ritual functions as a social negotiation between individual and community, one that may often foster particular views concerning the application of a magickal worldview to everyday life. Whereas ritual in the context of seasonal celebration may focus its power and energy inward on that community and its individuals, what happens when these principles, and indeed, these ritual techniques, are taken to the outside world and placed on the stage of global activism? This chapter specifically addresses that question, along with how the practice of magick, particularly in the form of Witchcraft and Paganism, is itself constructed as a political act. Here we are dealing with two distinct but related phenomena.

First is the presence of occult traditions, most notably Witchcraft, in debates and controversies surrounding freedom of religion. The second, more intriguing from a performance standpoint, involves the application of values specific to the magickal worldview, usually with Paganism and feminist Witchcraft as examples, as well as the use of ritual techniques from these traditions in political actions. In the latter case, we see a clear pattern that establishes a political basis for the ongoing struggles within occult traditions about the practice of initiation, which we will address in the final chapter. However, in order to get a sense of how intertwined magick and activist politics are, this chapter will also explore some debates within the magickal community about ethics, notions of power, and the influence of myth and history on constructions of magick as a political act.

299 First, though, we must briefly return to the anthropological scene and the contested

discourse around the role of magic in the building of community. In the entrenched debates about

the demarcation between religion and magic, social theorists like Émile Durkheim believed that

adherents to religion composed a society whose beliefs and practices bound them together,

ultimately for the greater good of that society. In contrast, those who practiced magic were out

for themselves and only dealt with clientele. Although he admits that the boundaries between

religion and magic are often slippery, Durkheim maintains that the members of a Church make

up a “moral community,” one that magic lacks, famously proclaiming “There is no Church of

magic” (62). Unlike Durkheim’s model of a client-based magical practice, one that certainly

existed in the folk history of Europe and in the indigenous cultures studied by early

anthropologists, modern practitioners of magic do form a community of shared beliefs and

practices. However, this community is far from monolithic, in many cases actively avoiding the

authority and homogeneity associated with the term “church,” including an absence of clear

leaders who “speak for” their congregation, or a sacred text that inscribes the beliefs of the

community. As we will see, it is those particular differences from mainstream monotheism that

most causes problems for Pagans and other magickal practitioners in the judicial and political

sphere.

But the differences run deeper within the practice of magic itself and what role

practitioners see for magic in the community. In Purity and Danger , Mary Douglas critiques both Durkheim’s simplistic view of community and Frazer’s problematic dialectic of magic/religion/science. She makes a significant leap in anthropological study of magical ritual when she proclaims, “it is wrong to treat primitive ritual as primarily concerned with magical effects” (60). Here, Douglas suggests quite openly that magic and ritual function as expressions

300 of community in addition to any goal that the magical act may have. Similarly, Stanley

Tambiah argues “when beliefs are taken to be prior to ritual action, the latter is considered derivative and secondary, and is ignored or undervalued in its own right as a medium for transmitting meanings, constructing social reality, or, for that matter, creating and bringing to life the cosmological scheme itself” (129). 1 His construction of ritual centers on what he sees as performative. Contrary to Roach’s sense of performative as having an audience (41), Tambiah uses the term in the Austinian sense: that magical statements are neither true nor false, they are words that do something. In other words:

Magical acts, usually compounded of verbal utterance and object manipulation, constitute

“performative” acts by which a property is imperatively transferred to a recipient object

or person on an analogical basis. Magical acts are ritual acts, and ritual acts are in turn

performative acts whose positive and creative meaning is missed and whose persuasive

validity is misjudged if they are subjected to that kind of empirical verification associated

with scientific activity. (60)

Tambiah argues strongly for this performative approach to ritual, against the notions that magic is failed science (represented by Frazer’s theories) or as a closed system with no opportunity for verification or falsification (represented by Popper’s). He rejects notions of true/false when it comes to ritual, and rather, wants to use words like validity, correctness, legitimacy, and felicity

(77). In his use of the Austinian performative, Tambiah limits his analysis of ritual to the

1 Here, Tambiah offers a salient suggestion for reading ritual. He wishes to fuse cultural accounts that establish the inherent cultural difference between rituals and even between different performances of the same ritual, with a formal analysis that constructs a system of symbolic communication. Once ethnography on ritual magic is opened up to the possibility of study within performative frames of social action, Tambiah argues, then “a new horizon opens for the viewing of logic of such purposive acts and the canons for their validity from the actors’ points of view” (136).

301 illocutionary. For Tambiah, illocutionary ritual or magical acts “simply by virtue of being enacted (under the appropriate conditions) achieve a change of state, or do something effective”

(79). Yet what I have attempted to show with my examples of Pagan ritual is that rites also have strong perlocutionary effects. Austin sets up the perlocutionary act thus: “Saying something will often, or even normally, produce certain consequential effects upon the feelings, thoughts, or actions of the audience, or of the speaker, or of other persons: and it may be done with the design, intention, or purpose of producing them . . .” (101). So here we are talking about consequences that reach outside of the actual ritual space. In the realm of magical ritual, particularly in the virtual space circumscribed by Pagan belief and philosophy, the consequences of ritual magic can be direct, but are most often more subtle, manifesting through psychological processes. A practitioner may feel the effects of a magical working many months later and in unexpected ways.

One of the first ways that I encountered this kind of performative magic was in the early

1990s when I was researching resistant practices in American prisons. A mutual friend who had served time in an Ohio correctional institution introduced me to one of his friends, a young man by the name of Chris Bright, via mail. I was somewhat familiar with correctional politics when I researched so-called supermax prisons for a major journalistic project at the University of Notre

Dame, my undergraduate institution. I was also somewhat experienced at bending the rules for sending my friend audiotapes and negotiating the complex system of rules for prison correspondence. 2 In my letters with Bright, we discussed topics ranging from Foucault’s

2 At the time, the prison only allowed inmates to receive shrink-wrapped, store manufactured tapes and recordable blank tapes were forbidden. As my main connection to this friend was as a fellow musician, I wanted to send him mix tapes. So I bought cheap tapes, recorded over them with my own material and gave them to a mutual friend with a shrink-wrap machine, so that the tape would appear new. This method proved quite successful.

302 Discipline and Punish to ceremonial magick, often focusing on the politics of prison life.

Bright was a fledgling magickal practitioner himself, relating to me his method for obtaining learning materials while he was incarcerated:

Ray and I crafted sigils from found silver and planned to perform and invocation at

midnight on October 31, 1987. I had incorporated the wizard star design in a diagram

on the floor of my cubicle. For some reason, the 11:30 count was not cleared, and

Ray could not come over to my wing of the dorm. Therefore, I performed the ritual

alone. My request was simply that books of effectual (sic) magic should come to me

and Ray. When I met up with Ray the next morning, he told me he too had performed

the ritual, using his own sigil, and without knowing what my beseechment (sic) had

been, had also asked for magic texts to become available for our self-initiation.

Within the next year we amassed a rather large library of occult materials considering

the extremely restrictive circumstances. 3

He then goes on to list quite a selection of books, periodicals, and tarot decks, from authors like

A.E. Waite, Aleister Crowley, Israel Regardie, Raymond Buckland, and Carl Jung. In an earlier letter, Chris tells me how as chief clerk he was able to borrow books through interlibrary loans to obtain popular occult materials that would not have passed prison censors if they had been received through mail order. He seems to draw no distinction between the magic in his ritual, and the magic of his library negotiations. Indeed, he capitalizes “Chief” in Chief clerk, transforming the title into a Golden Dawn-like heirophantic position in the temple of language, the library. He

3 Personal correspondence, October 1996.

303 even puns on the word “adept” to describe his talents for negotiating around the rules. Thus, mail ordering correspondence takes on magickal qualities.

Not surprisingly, a growing number of the prison population are turning to magical religions like Yoruba, Santeria, and Wicca, and practicing forms of ceremonial and ritual magick. For instance, a recent survey of religious denonimations in Washington state prisons revealed that of those who claimed religious affiliation, Pagans were the highest number at 1,839

(out of a total of 15, 574), with Catholicism trailing behind at 1,534 (Demsky). 4 This number, a striking 11% of those surveyed, involves many inmates who become Pagan after their incarceration, and may perhaps reflect a desire among inmates for a practice that is highly individualized and emphasizes personal responsibility over notions of judgement, sin and redemption. For these prisoners, magical religion not only offers them an alternative belief, but the possibility of resistance within the institutionalized structure, in which the individual can exert some amount of will in a setting designed to suppress and control that will. Rather than passively surrendering to Otto’s “creature consciousness,” (10) cowering at the foot of divine power and emanation, the prisoner/magician asserts his own control of elements within the intimate ritual space, in the cell, or on paper. 5 Contrary to the tendency of state ceremony to preserve the status quo and impose collective will and vision on individuals, Bright’s ritual circle demonstrates quite poignantly the ability of magical practice to provide a pocket of resistance within institutional settings. Like de Certeau’s tactics, Bright’s magical practice offers a glimpse

4 It is important to note that the survey does differentiate between Paganism and Satanism, which had four adherents in Washington prisons, according to the survey.

5 Prison literature has a long tradition of incorporating occult symbolism, as evidenced by works as diverse as Wole Soyinka’s A Shuttle in the Crypt and Jean Genet’s Thief’s Journal .

304 at a particular kind of occult politics, in which individuals resist state power through the

transformation of institutional space and the dynamic of revealing and concealing. In Bright’s

case, he hides occult materials from the prison censors by using an ostensible system like

interlibrary loan. Whether on a large scale or a small scale, magical practice provides the

possibility for unique political action.

Thus, Pagan prison chaplains have been entering the system. Many Pagan organizations,

like Circle Sanctuary and Universal Life Church, have dedicated themselves to prison ministry in

order to aid this growing population. The Lady Liberty League, the activist arm of Circle

Sanctuary, has an entire division devoted to prison ministry. Of course, this Pagan prison

population is not without its controversy. 6 Some who identify as Pagan may represent a minority

number of white supremacists who interpret Norse Pagan religions, such as Asatru, as faiths that

further their racist agenda. This was exactly the case made by the Ohio attorney general when

challenging the constitutionality of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, a

relatively new federal law regarding freedom of religion issues, in 2005. This particular action

was in response to a lawsuit, filed by a group of Ohio prisoners, notably represented by a

Satanist, a racial separatist, and prisoners involved in both Wicca and Asatru, that claimed that

the prison denied them religious literature, ceremonial items (such as a pentacle for Wiccans and

hammer symbols for Asatru followers), and time to worship. When the story was originally

reported by the New York Times , the article uncritically repeated information from the Ohio

Attorney General’s brief that characterized Asatru as “advocating violence by the white race and

6 And neither is the issue of Pagan prison chaplains. Jamyi Witch, the first full-time salaried state prison chaplain, has had to endure constant political pressure, threats, and verbal attacks since her appointment to the Wisconsin prison system in 2001 (Barner-Barry 108).

305 the ‘mud races’.” However, a follow-up article corrected this “incomplete description” by presenting the position of other Asatru followers who claimed that “the use that some violent and white-supremacist prisoners make of the religion is a perversion of its peaceful and nonracist beliefs” (Greenhouse). Regardless, in a landmark decision on the case Cutter vs. Wilkinson (No.

03-9877), the Supreme Court upheld the Ohio law, maintaining that the law did not “elevate accommodation of religious observances over an institution’s need to maintain order and safety,” in the words of Justice Ginsburg (qtd. in Holland). 7

Many other religious freedom cases have made headlines in recent years. In 1999, a small military base in Ft. Hood, Texas, received significant attention when then Georgia

Representative Bob Barr learned of a Wiccan circle that was holding ritual there. Barr made it his personal campaign to ban the Wiccan faith, which he equated with Satanism, from the military. Barr’s ferocious campaign, which involved calling for a boycott of the U.S. Military by conservative Christian groups, was eventually shut down by both the military and the Senate, but not before attracting national media attention, including a Good Morning America interview in which then presidential candidate George W. Bush stated that Wicca was not a real religion

(Bannerjee). Though the Christian coalition eventually abandoned the boycott, and the military

7 This case is one of a long line of federal cases about the religious rights of prisoners, including Dettmer vs. Landon in 1986, which had to determine whether Wicca qualifies as a protected religion, and whether the prisoner had the right to related religious objects. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals determined that Wicca did function as a religion, but considered the religious objects on a case-by-case basis (Barner-Barry 83). Other cases include Reese v. Coughlin , a 1996 case in which the U.S. District Court for the Southern District in New York disallowed the use of Tarot cards, considering them a “disruptive, dangerous, and not easily countered force” to “gain psychological control or influence over other inmates” (qtd. in Barner-Barry 84). Barner-Barry contrasts this with other cases that allowed for the use of alcohol consumption as part of Catholic communion, arguing that the strangeness and unfamiliarity of the Tarot cards made them a more likely target for banning, despite the fact that alcohol may pose a much larger threat (84).

306 upheld the religious freedom of its soldiers, local events disturbingly recalled the fear and rhetoric of the European witch trials.

Reverend Jack Harvey of the Tabernacle Baptist Church in Killeen, Texas organized what he called a “March Against Wickedness,” which he planned on ending at a local New Age bookstore, in protest of the Wiccan community in the vicinity of Ft. Hood. Quoted in the Ft.

Worth Star-Telegram, the Reverend declared a war on witches, advising at least one congregation member to carry a handgun “in case a worlock grabs one of our kids.” Invoking old witch trial tropes, Harvey accused the local Wiccans of drinking blood and eating babies

(Schlachter). Lianna Costantino-Mead, a local Wiccan high priestess, and other area Wiccans organized a counter march they called a “Demonstration of Diversity,” in which, according to local sources, they outnumbered the Baptists by 3 to 1. The scene outside the New Age store was certainly colorful – the Baptists with signs like “Turn and Burn” and “God Hates Witchcraft”, and waving small American flags, while the Wiccans chanted their traditional tunes like “We All

Come From the Goddess.” A soldier from the nearby base, a Christian who supported the

Wiccans’ rights to worship, constructed a cross, dabbed himself with theatrical blood, put a wreath of branches on his head and carried the cross between the two groups. After attempts at dialogue (and offers of water) were rejected by the Baptists, the hate group eventually walked away as the Pagans sang the national anthem (Denny).

The presence of Pagans in the military has persisted, and in 2007, a historic decision by the Department of Veterans Affairs recognized the pentacle (the five-pointed star inscribed within a circle) as an official marker on federal military gravestones. 8 A group called Americans

8 It is interesting to note that the classic symbol of law enforcement is also a five-pointed star a circle, although in this case, the points of the star reach beyond the circle, possibly indicating a kind of authority, in which the elemental power of the star dominates the circle of community.

307 United for Separation of Church and State had filed suit on behalf of families of Wiccan

veterans, some of whom had unsuccessfully campaigned for over ten years to convince the

Veteran Affairs department to allow the Wiccan logo on the grave markers. Previously, the

department had allowed up to 38 symbols of various faiths, and an application process to add a

symbol of the list would typically take several months. However, requests from Wiccans had

been continually denied, despite the fact that Wicca is listed in the military chaplain handbook

and the pentacle is allowed on dog tags. Pagans and other religious freedom organizations, like

the ACLU, rallied around the Roberta Stewart, the widow of Sgt. Patrick Stewart, an Air Force

pilot killed in combat over Afghanistan in 2005, and families of other Wiccan veterans in order

to file the suit. These Wiccan soldiers are not a small number. The New York Times article on the decision mentions a Pentagon survey that lists 1800 Wiccans in the Air Force alone (Bannerjee).

Despite the eventual capitulation by the Department of Veterans Affairs, attitudes towards

Wiccans in the military are still regressive. At the same time as the Patrick Stewart incident, the

Washington Post reported on an Army chaplain, Don Larsen, who had been a Pentecostal minister, but wished to change his affiliation to Wicca, after spending time in Iraq and seeing the effects of religious fundamentalism. Not only was his request to be the first Wiccan military chaplain denied, but Larsen was stripped of his chaplaincy all together, despite a perfect military record, and despite the fact that religious denominations with much less numbers in the military did have chaplains of their own faith (Cooperman). This situation remains unresolved as the number of Wiccan military grow. I personally know a soldier who has run a Wiccan circle in

Iraq and oversaw the initiation of a young woman who became the high priestess of a circle on a

U.S. Naval ship. Though military Pagans may be controversial within the broader Pagan

308 community, due to a perception that Paganism is a pacifist faith, many military Pagans see

their practice as a “warrior path,” in which military service is justified.

Pagans both in the military and the prison system are salient examples of tactical

practices that create transformative space within oppressive and even dangerous environments,

such as warzones. Yet these are only a few examples of the ways in which magickal practitioners

must contend with discrimination and prejudice in a primarily Christian culture. Carol Barner-

Barry, in Contemporary Paganism: Minority Religions in a Majoritarian America , outlines numerous examples of social and legal battles over first amendment religious rights, challenging assumptions about the separation of church and state, and revealing inherent biases towards monotheism in laws and legal judgements. In one instance, Barner-Barry presents the case of a

Wiccan high priestess in Virginia who applied for a permit to perform marriages, but was denied by the County Circuit Court judge. In the ruling, the judge wanted documentation that not only established the legitimacy of the applicant’s coven, but also authorized the priestess as a legitimate religious leader of that group, a request that could be easily filled by a priest or a rabbi. However, Paganism has no centralized organization that grants authority in such a way, nor do they have a sacred text that all devotees follow (75-78). Though the judge’s ruling gave no indication of his religious affiliation or level of devotion, Barner-Barry argues that the judge’s neutrality was compromised by “his own internalized and unquestioned assumptions about religion based on the prevalent norms for church organization within the Christian tradition”

(77). Barner-Barry goes on to demonstrate many more examples where Wicca’s non-hierarchical structure baffle lawmakers and officials, and place Pagans at a disadvantage because they have no over-arching organization that can “give a single voice to Paganism” (28).

309 To compensate for this, Internet-based activist groups and organizations like Circle

Sanctuary, essentially a networking organization, aid practitioners in their legal and civic battles. engage in more personal, civic activities. One of the main elements of Circle Sanctuary, a

Midwestern group headed by Selena Fox and Dennis Carpenter in Wisconsin, is the Lady

Liberty League (LLL), a “religious freedom support service.” 9 On their website, the LLL claims to include specialists in “a variety of focus areas, including public relations, countering harassment, employment issues, child custody issues, military affairs, law enforcement relations, legal affairs, interfaith relations, scholars support, and others” (“About”). The LLL was particularly vocal in the time after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, with Selena Fox suggesting ways for Pagans to act in the wake of the attacks. She urges them to express and process feelings and perspectives, comfort others, create an altar as a focal point for spiritual work, do spiritual work, contribute to relief efforts, participate in interfaith and multicultural happenings, stay informed, and be centered. The LLL was one of several groups who promoted “Goddess Bless America” paraphernalia to support the waves of patriotism following the tragedy, and in some cases counter the bigotry that the patriotism sometimes became. Some of the more recent news updates on the site include a call to action for those who wished to combat George W. Bush’s “faith- based initiatives” bill because, according to the site, the bill would legalize a form of employment discrimination based on religion.

The site also contains quarterly reports of civil actions undertaken by network members.

Some of these include: a federal court case in which a Wiccan priestess in Richmond, Virginia

9 When I attended one of their annual meetings at the Pagan Spirit Gathering in Ohio, Selena Fox explained how the group regards the Statue of Liberty as the representation of a goddess figure, and will often use similar iconographic representations found on coins and political seals for ritual work.

310 fought a ruling by the County Board that allowed others to open their meetings with prayer, but prohibited her, since she did not practice within the Judeo-Christian religion (Winter 2003); a school incident in Oklahoma in which the local ACLU won a lawsuit against a school who suspended a student for “spellcasting,” confiscating her notebooks, and banning her from wearing or drawing signs of the Wiccan religion (spring 2001); an attempt to replant land in

Cleveland, OH which was bulldozed by the city council prior to a hearing because the city deemed the owner’s intentional ecosystem an emergency cleanup project. The quarterly reports include a broad variety of incidents surrounding the military Pagan network, child custody cases, freedom of religion issues, environmental issues, and various other incidents. Thus, Circle

Sanctuary’s Lady Liberty League, as a networking entity, makes its presence felt through various members’ participation in these events, further demonstrating the close relationship between

Paganism and politics. Despite constant opposition from the Religious Right and the general policies of the Bush administration, these efforts of involving Paganism in the national and international scene have been remarkably successful. Currently, a significant milestone is being reached by the presence of Patrick McCollum, the first official Wiccan prison chaplain in the

United States and member of the Lady Liberty League, on panel of experts presenting to the U.S.

Commission on Civil Rights on religious discrimination and prisoners’ rights. This marks the first time that a Wiccan has been selected to present a briefing to advise the United States

Government. McCollum apparently plans to be sworn in to the Goddess, another significant first

(Griffin).

Yet, as we have seen, politics and occultism have a complex history, with groups like the

Rosicrucians, the Illuminati, and the Freemasons taking particular positions vis-à-vis the religious and political conflicts of their time. In Euro-American history, magic is used by those

311 in power and the marginalized alike. Indeed, one could argue that nationalist movements

share much in common with the occult tendency to mythologize origins and even employ occult

symbolism. Though Freemasonry and similar groups have diminished their status to little more

than charity groups and social clubs, the legends of influential secret societies persist today with

the oft-cited conspiracy theories surrounding Yale’s Skull and Bones Society, a secret

organization that counted many future American presidents as members, including both

Bushes. 10 The United Kingdom surely has utilized the magic of Arthurian legends and Celtic myths as part of their nationalist and colonialist foundation. Nazi Germany presents a familiar example of occult symbolism and theory to justify notions of racial purity. In some cases, these powers go head to head, illustrated by the efforts of British occultists against the Nazi threat (an occult power in its own right) in World War II. 11

Similarly, the political character of Wicca was highly shaped by the fact that England

was its birthplace and that its first public representative, Gerald Gardner, came from the

ceremonial tradition of groups like the Freemasons and the Golden Dawn. Significantly, one of

the main harbingers of this movement, the French mage Eliphas Lévi, began his career as

Alphonse Louis Constant, a political reformist who Hutton describes as a “mystical socialist

royalist” (70). Hutton further chronicles the surprisingly right-wing bent of many of the major

10 Conspiracy theorists have talked about this group for some time, and a relatively popular b-film, The Skulls (2000), was based on the group. More recently, New York Times Journalist Alexandra Robbins interviewed one hundred former members of the Skull and Bones society, and published her results in Secrets of the Tomb: Skull and Bones, The Ivy League, and the Hidden Paths of Power , New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2002.

11 Dion Fortune’s Society of Inner Light released a collection of her letters and writings involving her magical battle to protect England from Nazi invasion (Dion Fortune, The Magical Battle of Britain , Santa Rosa, CA: Atrium Publishers, 1993). Ronald Hutton also investigates conflicting stories about a ritual to defeat the Nazis, involving Gardner and Crowley, who was speculated to have been involved with the MI5 at one point ( Triumph 208-9).

312 figures of the British occult movement, from Mathers’ militarism to Yeats’ “flirtation with fascism,” Crowley’s identification as a high Tory, and Dion Fortune’s conservative social and political attitudes. Even the first public witches, Gardner and Sanders, were for the most part conservative and highly concerned with hierarchy and monarchy (361). Significantly, Hutton points out that the magical and spiritual interests of these individuals reflected three important components of right-wing ideology: “nostalgia for a better past, elitism and suspicion of the masses, and a desire for a free market, in magic and sex as in economics” (361). Finally, Hutton points out the marked political shift that occurred when Wicca crossed the Atlantic and made its way to California in the 1970’s. As we have seen, American Wicca from the 1970’s to the present has been increasingly left leaning in its politics. Feminist spirituality, particularly represented by Starhawk and Z. Budapest, transformed Wicca from radical conservatism to radical socialism (361). Thus, magic as a practice and occultism as a political strategy can adapt quite well to the ideologies of their practitioners, reflecting the social and political desires of the times. In order to uncover the political shifts in feminist Wicca that most directly inform Pagan politics, it is necessary to take a closer look at the mythic basis for the religion.

Burning Times, Goddess Traditions, Gender Politics

When Tanya Luhrmann speaks of practitioners’ desire for an ideal community, she argues that they are not concerned with the inversion of class and hierarchical categories, as in

Victor Turner’s model of liminality and communitas. Yet, ritual is not just about self-indulgently creating a fantasy world to make participants feel better. Wiccan discourse, including texts written by practitioners and performed rituals, attests to the political significance of creating such a world. Anodea Judith of the Church of All Worlds, a considerable Pagan organization in the

313 United States, uses the example of the Eleusinian mystery cycle as a ritual method that works

to heal what she refers to as a fundamental split between “heaven and earth, between male and

female, between mind and body” (Hopman and Bond 228). She describes playing the role of

Demeter in their enactment of the Persephone myth, as she accuses Zeus of abandoning his

daughter and essentially confronting the absent Father. Though using traditional gender

associations, Judith chooses to address patriarchy through ritual, claiming “When we do that on

an archetypal level, it will also happen politically and psychologically” (Hopman and Bond 228).

Further, Judith refers to a “herstory” that lies at the heart of much of feminist-based paganism,

and the source of much critical resistance to the practice: the concept that the whole of society

was at one time matrifocal, worshipping “the Goddess” until violent, patriarchal culture came on

the scene. This culture supposedly subjugated the sacred feminine, replacing the goddesses with

male warrior gods, and thus inculcating the destructive values that adherents of feminist

spirituality rally against.

The foundation for this theory seems to date back to late nineteenth and early twentieth- century archaeological finds, particularly in Crete, in which female figurines were thought to represent goddess figures. Archaeologists and scholars, like Sir Arthur Evans,

J.J. Bachofen, Sir Edmund Chambers, and Jane Ellen Harrison, colleague to Frazer, began to speculate about a matrifocal culture that worshipped a single Goddess (Hutton 36-37). This theory was again promoted in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, led by Jacquetta Hawkes. About this period, Hutton proclaims “Whether or not there ever was an Age of the Goddess in neolithic

Europe, there certainly was one among European intellectuals between 1951 and 1963” (280).

After that period, Hutton chronicles, scholars like Stuart Piggott turned against the theory, and many who had waved the goddess banner retreated to positions that admitted proof about the

314 goddess culture was sorely lacking, one way or the other. Yet, once again, these theories followed the usual pattern of occult scholarship: rejected by the scholarly community, they were being taken up wholeheartedly by the popular readership. Hutton particularly notes the influence of the goddess culture theories on psychology (281). Further authors like Margaret Murray and

Robert Graves solidified this idea in the popular imagination. At the arrival of radical feminism, the theory of the goddess culture resurfaced, through the efforts of authors like Mary Daly,

Barbara Ehrenreich, Deirdre English and Cynthia Eller.

This story an example of what Barner-Barry calls “the Mother Times,” one of three mythical bases for Paganism’s interaction with social politics. Here, the term “myth” is applied in a way that does not necessarily imply falsity, but rather narrative resonance. Another significant myth is the “Christian conversion,” which Pagans often imagine as a sudden, violent repression of the “Old Ways” by a hegemonic Church and government, rather than a gradual, complex, and sometimes even subtle process of negotiation where neither side can claim innocence (47). Yet, the most resonant and influential of the three myths was particular popular among some feminists. It is popularly known as the Burning Times, and this narrative significantly revises the history of the European witch burnings. These stories took Murray one step further by claiming that the women persecuted in the witch trials were descendants of those ancient women who participated in goddess worship. The burning of witches was seen as another stage in patriarchal oppression after the destruction of goddess culture. Witchcraft became a powerful symbol of women resisting the oppression of masculinist culture, just as the witch burnings became a symbol for that oppression. These images gained currency among radical feminists, such that a major radical feminist organization called themselves WITCH (Women’s

International Conspiracy From Hell). Yet, this particular history has also been the source of

315 much contestation by scholars, feminists, and practitioners. Diana Purkiss, in her The Witch

in History , comes down especially hard on the Burning Times story, proclaiming it “is not politically helpful” since it forever casts women as the helpless victims of patriarchy (17). In her analysis of the use of the Burning Times by feminist writers, particularly Mary Daly, Purkiss claims that it attempts to play a similar role in women’s history as the Holocaust does for Jews, in that it wants to “authorise the need for struggle and authenticate the forms that struggle takes”

(16). Yet, since most of the assertions made by supporters of the Burning Times cannot be proven or are patently false, the story is more accurately associated with myth and creative speculation than with historical fact; therefore it ultimately fails. 12 Further, Purkiss claims that

Daly has turned the Burning Times into a tool with which she can accuse those who disagree

with her of being “inquisitors” (16). Contextualizing the Burning Times myth, Purkiss claims

that the story became more popular as the women’s movement turned from the issues of rights

and equality towards more “crime-centered, private sphere issues” like rape and domestic abuse

(15). In other words, the myth functions as a “narrative of self-discovery” that feminists like

Daly use to direct the energy of the women’s movement, transforming the main character of the

witch into “a synecdoche of female victims of sexualized violence,” a move that Purkiss

ultimately finds disempowering. Purkiss finds this especially so since such passionate rhetoric

12 Purkiss quickly debunks several false assumptions associated with the witch burnings. She explains that the numbers of dead have been inflated; the fact that many witches were accused by women, secular courts were often more vindictive than the Inquisition; that midwives were more likely to help prosecute witches than to be accused; that most of the women were married with children, rather than independent, single, or elderly; that witches in England, and later Salem, were hanged rather than burned; and, perhaps most importantly, no evidence exists that suggests that these women were part of an underground nature-worshipping cult. Purkiss then notes that despite these false assumptions, some women still whole-heartedly believe in the myth (8).

316 tends to fall prey to sexist criticisms that women’s history is more experiential and

“emotional” (15-16).

Yet what Purkiss demonstrates is that the Burning Times myth is part of a larger discursive problem on writing women’s history. While she is critical of the Burning Times myth in terms of its efficacy, she is equally critical of male scholars who easily dismiss feminist historians as being “too close” to their subject, averring that this criticism only serves to “reify the enlightenment myth of objectivity” (63). Further, she claims “popular history disregards the assumptions which make Enlightenment history possible” (52). To achieve this balance between storytelling and truth telling, she suggests that “[w]e could try to think about how to harness the power of the imagination and the power of feeling without abandoning the project of telling the truth. We might begin seriously trying to invent ways to do history which allow us to see women mythmakers as historians, women’s poetry or painting or fiction as history” (53). Indeed, Purkiss points out, this balance of narrative and “truth-telling” especially breaks down in the history of witchcraft, an insight that could probably be applied to occult history in general. She claims that historians overlook the use of storytelling within witch narratives, and assume the narratives that emerge from the trial transcripts are based on actual events, rather than from other stories. 13

Further, Purkiss asserts, historians fail to take into account the very real beliefs in the supernatural that determined many of the stories (76). Therefore, while criticizing the Burning

Times myth as a problematic foundation for feminist practice, Purkiss still wishes to recoup a historiography that takes women’s stories into account.

13 This insight is particularly useful if one speculates that these stories were mostly drawn from folklore that already existed about witches, and were compounded by conspiracy theories propagated by church officials.

317 Besides Mary Daly, another major figure in feminist witchcraft that Purkiss examines

is Starhawk. Though Starhawk still focuses on victimization, Purkiss concedes that the author at

least offers a way out, a “fantasy of rebellion” that amounts to “an escape into power rather than

away from it.” Further, Starhawk “is posing a challenge to conventional history, partly by

introducing into it a self-consciously fictional reconstruction of interiority” (18-19). Starhawk

achieves this mainly through her three primary works The Spiral Dance , Dreaming the Dark , and

Truth or Dare . Each of these in some way presents Starhawk’s early view of modern witchcraft

as a return to a pre-patriarchal form of worship that emphasizes the feminine Goddess as the

center of values such as political consensus and environmentalism. However, it is The Spiral

Dance that most captured the imagination of practitioners who were looking for a link between

political ideals and practical work. Here, Starhawk introduces both the myth of the matrifocal

Goddess worshipping cultures and the Burning Times, while at the same time offering practical,

meditation-like exercises and actual spells for the reader’s use. This text ushered in a new era of

Wiccan practice that transformed the pseudo-masonic and ceremonial, male-fantasy oriented

notion of Goddess worship of British Wiccans like Gerald Gardner and Alex Sanders. Starhawk,

along with her contemporary Z. Budapest, were able to utilize the figure of the witch, what had

already been a potent symbol for feminism, and for the first time apply it to a religious practice. 14

In her subsequent works, she continued her use of both the matriarchal goddess society and

Burning Times narratives, and especially in Truth or Dare she often invoked imaginative scenes

14 In the late 1970’s, Budapest wrote and held workshops about feminist spirituality, resulting in a practice called “Dianic Wicca” (after the Roman warrior goddess) that was exclusively for women and did not recognize a male deity at all (Hutton 344). Starhawk also focused on goddess spirituality but unlike Budapest, supported both men and women in their endeavors to practice Wicca.

318 of ancestral goddess worship as a foundation for current practice. Hutton characterizes her work as more poetry than theology, in which Wicca is “a form of therapy, art, and creative play”

(346), lauding Starhawk’s rhetorical skill to evoke strong emotions in the reader, offering hope that personal and political change is possible through magic. However, Hutton criticizes

Starhawk for overstating her picture of society in which oppressive systems of power brainwash the unwitting masses, while the few who practice magic in order to restore “the old ways” are the only ones capable of resisting such oppression. 15

Although Hutton implies that Starhawk undermines her sense of resistance with her own brand of elitism, Starhawk’s arguments and story-telling provide us with some insight into a more intricate pattern regarding the link between origin stories and occult practices. When we speak of Freemasons, Rosicrucians, the Golden Dawn or even the witchcraft associated with

Gerald Gardner, we have an old story that often invokes both a death and the discovery of a corpse (or a corpus, as in the Hermetic texts). Freemasons had the murder of Hiram Abiff, the architect of Solomon’s temple. Rosicrucians had the death of Christian Rosenkreutz and the subsequent discovery of his tomb, which leads to the distribution of the manifestos. The Golden

Dawn had the discovery of secret documents and the mysterious “death” of Soror Anna

Sprengel. Wicca, as practiced and preached by feminists in the late 1970’s simply took this pattern a step further, by invoking the deaths of large groups of women who were supposedly witches and goddess worshippers. This motif plays out not only in the more obvious Burning

15 William Covino also offers an interesting critique of Starhawk, categorizing her magic as “arresting” as opposed to generative: “While Starhawk voices respect for diversity, she homogenizes individual and cultural differences, subsuming them to an overarching spirit that exists outside of language and governs all souls” (151). His critique is somewhat undercut, however, when he lumps Starhawk in with people who watch Oprah and read Shirley MacLaine books, rather than with actual practitioners of magic.

319 Times myth, which tells the story of women being burned for their heretical beliefs or simply their identity as independent women, but also in the Goddess culture stories which usually attributes the extinction of these cultures to violent overthrow by male patriarchy. Continually, the message in Starhawk’s work, especially Truth or Dare , is that these utopian matrifocal cultures eventually suffered under the thumb of male warriors greedy for power and domination.

Therefore, both the Burning Times myth and the Mother Times myths have genocide as an essential element of their respective stories. Unlike Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism, or the Golden

Dawn, the Wiccan stories focus on a nameless group, rather than on individuals, even those who individuals who were allegorical. This move from an individual to a group belies the particular political thrust of late twentieth-century Wicca, in which Wiccans intended to “reclaim” the power and validity of an entire gender in order to create a contrast with dominant societal views and religions.

Despite the pervasive criticism of Goddess tradition scholarship, and the fact that only inconclusive evidence exists for such a culture, this story of original matriarchy pervades in oral traditions throughout the world. Therefore, by invoking the Goddess culture story and the

Burning Times story, Starhawk and her ilk seem to be participating in a larger trope common to magically oriented gender conflicts throughout anthropology. For instance, Michael Taussig reveals that in many other cultures chronicled through ethnographies (he lists Amazonia, New

Guinea, Melanesia, Australia, and Central and West Africa), a common theme emerges of an original matriarchy violently displaced by an aggressive patriarchy in order to obtain “the spirit- theater of the secret” ( Defacement 103). Taking into account Purkiss’s protestations, however, what is the efficacy of invoking this narrative? The influence of Starhawk’s ideas about the

Goddess movement and her work on contemporary practice is undeniable. What she introduced

320 in her works was practically canon for Pagan practitioners for some time. Phyllis Curott,

former president of the Covenant of the Goddess, a substantial national umbrella organization for

pagan groups, and best-selling author of the autobiographical Book of Shadows and the more practical Witch Crafting , acknowledges the importance of the goddess culture stories in her own work. For her, these stories are empowering. Revealingly, she posits the notion of belief in a particular history as a replacement for religious belief. She tells us that “my original interest was intellectual and feminist. I did not have to believe in a feminine divinity to understand the implications for women: Here was a historical basis to challenge limitations long imposed upon us and the justifications for those constraints. If we had created culture once, we could certainly do it again” ( Witch Crafting 62).

However, in the light of much scholarly criticism, as well as a general movement by

Pagan practitioners away from these canonical myths, even Starhawk has modified her position somewhat. In 1999, in notes for the third edition of The Spiral Dance , she makes the following admission:

Finally, were I writing today I would probably be more cautious about the history I

present. . . . When I wrote this book, I was not attempting to do historical scholarship or

archaeology. Writing as a Witch, I felt free to involve my imagination in a reconstruction

of the past. In reality, the most “objective” of historians do the same; they’re just not so

blatant about it. Today I might exhibit more middle-aged caution, but to do so might

undercut the real power of this history, which lies in the awakening of imagination and a

sense of possibilities. (3)

She goes on to defend the importance of the Goddess story, asserting that most religions cannot prove the factual validity of their origin stories either. Her final claim sums up a more

321 postmodern take on history and origins, in which an emphasis is placed on emotional truth and the “whatever works” mentality essential for the bricolage of practice and de Certeau’s tactics:

The truth of our experience is valid whether it has roots thousands of years old or thirty

minutes old, that there is a mystic truth whose proof is shown not through references and

footnotes but in the way it engages strong emotions, mobilizes deep life energies, and

gives us a sense of history, purpose, and place in the world. What gives the Goddess

tradition validity is how it works for us now, in the moment, not whether or not someone

else worshipped this particular image in the past. (3)

Starhawk’s words reach back through occult history to validate the ancient tradition of creating ancient traditions. At the same time, however, she shifts the emphasis towards the practical application of myths. If the stories create a foundation for practice, then their factual truth becomes irrelevant. Though she attempts to move beyond it, Starhawk is here simply outing the public secret of occult history: that the creation of an ancient precedent is essential for the validation of an occult practice.

Further, by painting the historical picture of witchcraft and Goddess worship as a gender struggle, she associates female practitioners with a tradition of oppressed cultures. More than just creating a victim mentality, as Purkiss accuses, Starhawk’s positioning of Goddess worship aligns it with the struggles of marginalized groups, particularly in the era just after the Civil

Rights movement and second wave feminism. These groups often form an alternative community, one defined not by proximity but by shared beliefs and interests that generally place outside the mainstream of society. On this basis, Helen Berger, in her 1999 study A Community of Witches , compares the Pagan community with the gay and lesbian community. While neither

322 is by any means monolithic, both operate somewhat outside the mainstream and participate in

a “shared life world,” a term she borrows from phenomenology, in which participants form a

“community of memory” based on a history of shared persecution (70). Here, the Burning Times

myth looms large. Members of such groups tend to move to larger urban centers, where they can

at once remain anonymous amongst those who would ostracize them and connect with those of a

similar lifestyle.

The elision of Paganism and the gay and lesbian movement appears quite frequently. One

of the most oft-used tropes by neophyte pagans is the term “coming out of the broom closet” to

indicate a practitioner’s act of revealing her or his identity to others. For many with religiously

strict upbringings, this “coming out” process may be quite difficult and dramatic in its own way.

The use of the closet trope by both homosexuals and witches speaks to the fear of negative

repercussions surrounding their revelation. These communities offer visibility for their members

through festivals, gatherings, and rituals. Also, the community provides modeling for its

younger members, which involves teaching ways to interpret life experiences. Berger

emphasizes that this is a community based not on geography but on experiences, concerns, and world-view: “Both the Neo-Pagan [sic] and homosexual communities have permeable boundaries. People may be considered members who do not have face-to-face interactions and who, in fact, do not know one another. Both communities involve people who are dissimilar from one another in many of their beliefs and practices” (69). To take the comparison a step further, the word “witch” has some of the strange power that “queer” has, as a derogatory term reclaimed as an epithet of power by those who have adopted it. The Wiccan activist Starhawk, one of the most prominent writers on the subject, tells us “The word witch should rub us the wrong way” ( Dreaming 25). Indeed, during the witchcraze of the 16 th and 17 th centuries,

323 muttering the word “witch” in the right place could guarantee the accuser the lands and possessions of the accused, and it could obviously mean certain torture and death for the unfortunate victim. Thus, the reclaiming of the term reverses a certain sort of dangerous performativity and redirects it toward alternative notions of power and political action. Thus, by naming their spiritual practice “witchcraft,” feminist witches evoke a gendered history that reconfigures the idea of power itself, while also raising questions of ethical responsibility, since witchcraft was popularly seen as negative magic. From here, we explore the basis for magical ethics.

Doing What Thou Wilt: Wiccan Ethics, Power and Political Action

Earlier, we discussed Horkheimer and Adorno’s fear of magical consciousness as a formula for passivity, in which “magic” was seen as a metaphor for the kind of power created by labor and production, the government, or advertising. In this classic occult construct, power is wielded (note the passive voice) by the mysterious force whose source is hidden behind the curtain like the titular wizard in the Oz story. With regard to political action and notions of power within the Pagan community, this magic is not a metaphor but an active ritual performance that may influence people or events. This magic by its very nature may be mimetic, but it is certainly literal. When magical practitioners, specifically Pagans, talk about power, they are attempting to reverse the classic notion of the all-powerful sorcerer, replacing him with the image of the working class witch, the village wise woman who does what she can to survive in the patriarchal world around her. As we have seen, the figure of the rebellious witch fueled much of the Pagan ideology of the late 20 th century. Yet, more than just the image is involved here.

When Starhawk introduced her work in the late 1970’s, she intended to redefine power from a

324 more individual, personalized perspective. This notion of personal power would also lead to a particular kind of ethics of personal responsibility, both in terms of magical actions and political actions, defined as the choices that one makes in one’s everyday life that affect one’s environment and others. Starhawk and her adherents argue that Wiccan ceremony, with its circle casting and energy raising, reflects this network of relations between self and other, individual and environment. Indeed, Wicca in its role as a religion of immanence, in which one experiences divinity in one’s immediate environment, brings religion into the discussion of political action quite pervasively. This intertwining of religion and politics displays itself most prominently in the political actions performed by practitioners like Starhawk and her Reclaiming Community.

In her original discussions of power, Starhawk distinguishes power-over, a patriarchal method of control, from power-from-within, a way of transforming the self through personal will. In other words, magic. She associates the former with a sense of estrangement, in which one is somehow separate from the world, an attitude, she claims, responsible for war and environmental destruction. Continuing the metaphorical link between magic and power,

Starhawk characterizes power-over as a kind of sorcery: “[I]t casts a spell on us. It changes our consciousness, clouds our vision so that we don’t notice it in operation. It is the magician who distracts us with a rabbit as he saws the woman in half. From a witch’s viewpoint, power-over is an entity, an independent being with an energy and life of its own, an ensouled thought form”

(Truth or Dare 95). By giving the controlling entity form, Starhawk provides an opportunity to magically act against it with one’s own personal power. This manifestation has several implications. On an individual level, a practitioner can choose to use this technique in order to effect personal, psychological change. Further, within a broader political spectrum, Starhawk’s notion of the power-over thought form provides the opportunity for an individual or a group to

325 act against whatever the perceived oppressor is. Thus, practitioners can create a kind of

magical effigy against which they can direct their opposing magic.

Donald Michael Kraig offers an example of the former kind of magical work when he

introduces what he calls the “I.O.B.” ritual: Identify, Objectify, Banish (Kraig 124-130). In this

exercise, the practitioner identifies some personal negative characteristic or an unhealthy

relationship, for instance, and objectifies this by giving it an image or form, perhaps through

drawing or sculpting. The practitioner imagines a cord that connects himself to this entity, and in

a ritual setting, performs a cutting of this chord, effectively banishing the entity. Lon Milo

DuQuette, in his autobiography My Life With The Spirits , describes a similar process when he

evokes the demon “Orabas.” In a dramatic scene, DuQuette describes his initially frustrating

attempts to evoke the demon within the traditional triangle of manifestation. 16 The demon does

finally appear after DuQuette literally attacks himself, hitting himself on the hand with his wand

and cursing himself. DuQuette then decides to direct his self-hatred and rage towards the

triangle: “Here at last was an object upon which I could spew all my frustration and fear. I had

trapped the fiendish devil, the source of all my ills, in a cardboard triangle and it was going to

listen to me. The monster was myself and my name was Orabas” ( My Life 101). Here, DuQuette

essentially implies the demon is an outward manifestation of his own self-loathing. However,

instead of banishing the creature, DuQuette puts the demon to use, commanding it to find him

the means to provide for his family (105). This kind of intense magical work was also practiced

by Aleister Crowley, whose infamous invocation of the demon Choronzon in the North African

16 The triangle of manifestation was an important factor in medieval magic that attempted to follow the guidelines set down by the legendary Solomon, who supposedly bound demons into his service to help build the Temple of Jerusalem. The triangle of manifestation was also an important part of Aleister Crowley’s work with the demon Choronzon (Owen 200).

326 desert was part of an extended deep psychological and sexual process in his magical development. In this story, Crowley “becomes” the demon in a much more dramatic way, attacking his protégé, Victor Neuberg. Both DuQuette’s and Crowley’s adventures with the demon world transform the folkloric tropes of “demon possession” into a kind of “performance of the demonic,” in which the protagonist identifies with or even becomes the demon itself.

Through this method, practitioners are able to exert control over both external and internal influences, using familiar language and ritual action particular to magical practice.

Similarly, Phyllis Curott connects her magical and psychological work with her personal struggles around issues of feminist empowerment and sexual harassment. In an interesting chapter of her best-selling Book of Shadows , Curott’s account of her discovery of Wicca while working as a high profile New York City attorney in the 1980’s, she juxtaposes the protective ritual work her all-female group does with her own experiences of extreme sexual harassment at her workplace. Along the way, she offers the traditional Burning Times and Mother Times rhetoric, musing about warrior goddesses and the quest for the Holy Grail as a metaphor for the attempt to make whole the fragmented feminine. Curott tells how several incidents involving circle members and male sexual aggression converge, culminating in an intense ritual in which the women banish the “negative energy” of the perpetrators from the women, sending it back to them, presumably for retribution. Leading up to this, one of the group’s members, Jeanette, goes to Phyllis for legal help to protect her from her physically abusive ex-husband. Curott mentions, but gives no details on, a sexual assault on another member on the day of the rite. During all this, as she does throughout the book, Curott describes the ongoing sexual harassment she undergoes in her workplace by her boss John Hadus, the Hades to Curott’s Persephone in her underworld narrative.

327 During the banishing ritual, in which the priestess invokes protective goddesses

(including Sekhmet, Hecate, Morrigan, Kali) wielding a sword and a “wail of primeval pain and

rage,” Curott describes her terror at seeing a literal black cloud in the room that disappears with

the banishing. 17 While contemplating this vision, she later calls this presence her “Shadow,” borrowing a concept from Jungian psychology, and then the Guardian at the Gate, a concept in ceremonial magic that personifies a magician’s personal challenges. 18 From this, Curott achieves

an insight that underlines the basis for the chapter: “It began to dawn on me that the negative

energies I was encountering at work were not separate and apart from my Wiccan spiritual

pursuits. In fact, they were a reflection of that work. They expressed the very shadows that stood

between myself and the sacred” ( Book 169). By rehearsing the mythological element of

protective warrior goddesses in this chapter about women fighting back against male aggression,

Curott links goddess worship with Daly’s “private sphere” feminist politics. In addition, through

the intentional juxtaposition of ritual scenes and magical philosophy with elements of her

professional life and its challenges, highlighting sexual harassment, Curott demonstrates an

intimate link between a particular feminist politics and magical practice. Further, she questions

her experience, using psychological and magical knowledge as a way to confront and attempt to

overcome the mysterious presence that shapelessly threatens her development, ultimately

embodying her fear of her own lack of power.

17 Similarly, the Hermetic Order of Chicago utilized Sekhmet as a patron goddess, mostly due to the personal practice of Althea Northage-Orr, who sees Sekhmet as a fierce protector goddess, particularly for those who have suffered from sexual abuse or rape. Many women, and a few men, in the group resonated with the goddess figure for this reason, due to their own experiences.

18 In popular magical literature, the Guardian at the Gate is also known as the Watcher at the Threshold. Once again opting for a more psychological interpretation of Western magical tradition, John Michael Greer claims that the Watcher can take the form of boredom, frustration, distraction, or fear ( Paths 326-8).

328 Therefore, these practices of imagining the controlling power as something you can

turn the tables on and have control over demonstrate how magic, as a mimetic practice, can serve

as a tool for personal change. However, taken a step further, this kind of practice may also have

the potential as a tool for resistance. Here, we can characterize Starhawk’s theories of collective

action and social responsibility as simply an activist interpretation of traditional magical

principles. Recalling the notion of correspondence that we discussed earlier, practitioners build

up their store of knowledge by learning connections between disparate objects and concepts, like

the correspondence between the planets and herbs. In this system, “everything is connected to

everything else” through a network of analogies. According to Starhawk, power-from-within is

based on what she calls the psychology of immanence, and “when we practice magic we are

always making connections, moving energy, identifying with other forms of being” ( Dreaming

13). Starhawk’s statements that “immanence is context” and that the individual “is a nexus of interwoven relationships” ( Dreaming 37) indicate that she is taking the principle of

correspondence and applying it to social relationships and, ultimately, to religion and ethics.

According to this construct, those who practice power-from-within and “power-with” not only

are personally empowered but are committed to collective action. Thus, the Starhawk-style of

Pagan politics seems to indicate a desire for consensus-based, non-hierarchical functioning that

immediately contrasts with the traditional hierarchies and secrecy associated with groups like the

Golden Dawn.

Some practitioners contend that this political goal is built into the very ritual structure of

the practice. For instance, Loretta Orion claims “the circle model unifies spirituality and politics

and inspires experimentation with consensus” (238). Like King Arthur’s Round Table, the Pagan

circle denies hierarchy by its very shape, since no position seems privileged over another.

329 However, unlike a table, a circle of people does have a position of power: the center. Many

groups still cling to the terms “high priestess” or “high priest” even though it is often unclear

what makes them higher. The history of the Pagan movement reveals only partial success for the

goal of non-hierarchical consensus. Starhawk herself admits that consensus cannot always work,

though it is a worthwhile goal ( Truth or Dare 186). For instance, Helen Berger comments that

Wiccan covens tend to be more hierarchical than non-Wiccan groups, with differences in status supposedly based on skill and experience levels, though sometimes a strong personality is a factor. She notes that women seem to benefit from as much as, if not more than men in these hierarchical structures, therefore producing a difference in traditional power relations (62). I found this ambivalence toward hierarchy quite prevalent in the various communities I encountered. At a ritual sponsored by the Reclaiming community in Chicago, a branch of the larger organization associated with Starhawk on the West Coast, one of the celebrants noted that

Starhawk is not their “leader.” Rather, she is simply the most famous member of their organization.

Yet, the notions of hierarchy and sharing power are not the only areas of ambivalence in

Pagan practice. Ethics also hold a contentious place within this world. At the root of this ambivalence, we find the words of Gerald Gardner’s oath, the supposedly ancient Wiccan rede that instructs witches “’An it harm none, do what thou wilt.” But Gardner’s rede is simply a more cautious version of Aleister Crowley’s infamous rule “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law,” itself often misinterpreted as a call to wanton hedonism. Yet, Crowley was paraphrasing St. Augustine by way of Rabelais, who emphasized the notion of true will, a purified state in which selfish desires and lusts are subsumed (Sutin 126-127). Gardner took

Crowley’s statement and added the “harm none” caveat, and thus the rede has become one of the

330 most repeated aspects of Wicca. Most basic introductions to Wicca emphasize the rede, along

with the vaguely karmic rule known as the Threefold Law, that what you do in magic returns to

you three times. Recently, however, the Wiccan rede has been called into question as an

inadequate guideline for ethical activity in witchcraft.

Phyllis Curott in her book Witchcrafting , claims that the Threefold Law is still based on a patriarchal theory of punishment. In other words, “it’s the weak cousin of morality because it’s conduct based purely on deterrence” (180). Furthermore, Curott claims “the real reason that

Witches do not and should not harm, do baneful magic, or use magic to have power over others, is because they experience immanent divinity . . . you would simply never do harm, or manipulate someone else because you recognize that they are an embodiment of the divine”

(181). Again, Curott invokes Starhawk’s use of immanence to characterize a religious worldview in which everything is connected. It is the individual’s experience of this connection as divine, Curott argues, that should inspire the person to actions that support the connections.

Whether or not this incredibly sanguine idea is an effective gauge for determining morality--it certainly does not take into account conflicting definitions of what is “divine”--Curott’s statement does offer an alternative to a morality based on fear of punishment.

Both Curott and Starhawk attempt to apply this immanence-based ethics to both everyday actions and political actions. For instance, Starhawk mentions “the beer can principle” as a personal environmental goal in which an individual attempts to clean up the trash “you find in your path” ( Dreaming 33). More significantly, she sees a respect for immanence and the use of power-from-within as a way to set a limit on action that does not respect the divine connection.

In Dreaming the Dark , one such action that Starhawk deemed worthy of limiting was the licensing of the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant, which she protested by joining a blockade

331 and being arrested. In both Dreaming the Dark and Truth or Dare , Starhawk uses her experiences with protests and subsequent arrests to put her philosophy and magical ethics to use, telling stories of solidarity and resistance strikingly similar to those of the civil rights era. In describing the demonstrations, Starhawk invokes the classic definition of magick, by way of

Crowley and Fortune, and declares that political protests are acts of magic because they can change consciousness through an act of will. She distinguishes between direct action – as in the blockade – and symbolic action like marches and demonstrations, claiming that once political action becomes symbolic, it becomes magical, and that demonstrations are simply rituals with political intent ( Dreaming 169). At the end of the book, Starhawk describes the ritual the protesters performed. The chants invoked not only the names of goddesses, but the names

Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Three Mile Island, and ended with “No Diablo.” With this chant, the protesters raise energy, as in a typical Pagan rite, and send it to the plant. She then recounts that after the rite, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission discovered numerous safety violations in the plant and revoked the plant’s license, preventing its opening. Starhawk attributes the plant’s closing to her blockade ritual, claiming “The blockade succeeded – not by physically stopping the workers, but by changing the reality, the consciousness, of the society in which the plant exists” ( Dreaming 180). Once again, Starhawk invokes Crowley’s definition of magic, characterizing the “change” that occurs “in conformity with will” can indeed be political change.

However, she also acknowledges that the blockade was only a part of a broader effort and organization that took place over several years prior. Thus, for Starhawk, the “magic” is not just the ritual itself, but the entire grass roots political process that fueled the blockade.

Therefore, political action is an important ingredient to the witch’s brew drunk by practitioners who position themselves within these alternative communities. Several of the more

332 organized Pagan communities have continually worked for political action based on the

beliefs and practices of pagan or Wiccan religions. One such community is Starhawk’s own

Reclaiming Collective, a group based out of San Francisco. Their stated mission is to “combine

Earth-based spirituality with political, social, and ecological action” (“Welcome”). Descriptions

of Reclaiming’s definition, purpose, and structure are rife with Starhawk’s familiar language of

immanence-based worship. Starhawk’s own “working definition of Reclaiming” clearly lists the

things they consider sacred: “the living world, the body as well as the spirit, the cycles of nature,

sexuality in all its diverse expressions, and the elements of air, fire, water and earth that sustain

life.” Further, Starhawk contends that to “name these things as sacred is an inherently political

act, for that which is sacred must not be exploited or despoiled. We also know that action in the

world in the service of the sacred is one of the core expressions of our spirituality”

(“Definition”). Therefore, by definition, the act of sanctifying, the very act of naming something

as sacred constitutes a political act for Reclaiming, because a concept’s identity as sacred

inherently implies to Reclaiming that it must be protected.

This protection may take various forms, either through participation in major public

protests or simply through expression of Reclaiming’s immanence-based values. Much of

Reclaiming’s strategies to this end are both political and performative. Since 1979, the year that

Starhawk’s Spiral Dance was published, the group that would become Reclaiming the following year has staged a large public ritual and spiral dance at Fort Mason in San Francisco on Samhain, often attended by over 1500 people (Dennison). Equal parts pageant, street theatre, political rally, and ritual, the Spiral Dance has continued as an expression of the political and spiritual goals of the Reclaiming Community. At the core of the event is the actual Spiral Dance, a much larger version of the dance from the rite I described in the last chapter. Revealingly, in an article

333 chronicling the original 1979 Spiral Dance, Starhawk recalls that “we wanted to lure participants into a false sense of security by offering them a performance and then bring [sic] them into the dance” (qtd. in Craig). Like Matthew Ellenwood’s principle about involving ritual attendees, the ritual strategy involved making a shift between “passive” observation of performance to active participation in a dance. For Starhawk and Reclaiming, this active participation is also a political strategy to encourage people to become involved in political activism. In preparation for the 2004 Spiral Dance, the website tells us that even though subsequent Spiral Dances have not has “as much specific political content” as the first ritual in

1979, Starhawk had been asked to write a new “terrible litany,” in which she invokes a list of catastrophic events that participants respond to within the ritual (Craig). Anyone familiar with

Starhawk’s early books will recognize this technique, a call to arms of sorts to combat oppression and the like by listing its perpetrators in a ritual chant, like the invocation of the sites of nuclear destruction in the Diablo Canyon protests. Thus, the Spiral Dance event serves as a yearly cornerstone for Reclaiming’s political and ritual activity.

However, since the late 1990s, Starhawk has focused almost exclusively on direct political action, beginning with her involvement in the 1999 World Trade Organization protests in Seattle. This protest and several other international direct actions against global entities like the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), the World Bank and the International Monetary

Fund (IMF), form the subject matter of her most recent work, the aptly named Webs of Power:

Notes from the Global Uprising . In the first half of the book, Starhawk reprints emails and letters that chronicle the events surrounding various protests, rallies, and training workshops in Seattle,

Washington D.C., Prague, Montreal, Brazil, and Genoa, as well as her reactions to 9/11 in context with the anti-globalization movement. In these accounts, Starhawk describes both the

334 triumphs and the internal conflicts that she experienced in these actions, often focusing on the tensions between those who adhere to the principles of non-violence and those who do not.

She also describes her arrests and some of the dangerous situations involved with the actions, especially the brutality of the Italian police at the Genoa action. Though mainly writing from the perspective of a feminist anti-global activist, Starhawk’s Pagan spirituality tends to emerge at significant points. For instance, in a fascinating account of her Seattle arrest, Starhawk describes the scene almost as a guided meditation, written in second person, likening the experience to the underworld journey of Inanna. Like the goddess of the story, Starhawk and the other women must, in stages, strip down their identity quite literally as they enter the underworld of the jail cell (26). Just as Inanna’s descent into the underworld is an initiatory journey, so is this difficult passage, as the title of this section makes clear: “Making it Real: Initiation Instructions, Seattle

’99” (25). The sense of magical energy and political action as magic pervades the book, as

Starhawk argues that it is not enough “even to put our bodies on the line to stand against injustice. We must work magic. We must hold a vision” (31).

Indeed, what Starhawk calls “empowered direct action” is fueled by the notion that political protest is served first and foremost by “radical imagination” and a transformation of space to enact this vision. Again, invoking Fortune and Crowley’s definitions, this transformation is a magical act, a “changing consciousness through will” (97). Starhawk also recognizes that the magic of direct action is pitted against another powerful act of sorcery: globalization. The book opens with an account of a women’s circle in the midst of an activist planning session, in which the women’s improvised chant speaks of “webs of power.” In the chant, globalization is described as a web and an entrapment, while at the same time the women liken their own movement as weaving its own web as a way to make connections (1). Similarly,

335 in describing organizations like the WTO and the World Bank, Starhawk emphasizes the fact that their proceedings are secret, leaving their members unaccountable for the destructive decisions that they make. Thus, one of the goals of direct action is to “make visible the violence inherent in their structures and policies”(97) and disrupt the summit meetings of these organizations which are themselves “elaborate rituals, ostentatious shows of power that reinforce the entitlement and authority of the bodies they represent” (117). She further describes how protestors’ voices of doubt, criticism from the authorities, and messages from the media may seem reasonable, “But any Witch can recognize a spell being cast. A spell is a story we tell ourselves that shapes our emotional and psychic world” The media, the authorities tell a story so pervasive the most people mistake it for reality.” Yet Starhawk reminds her readers that “the counterspell is simple: tell a different story. Pull back the curtain, expose their story for the false tale it is” (155). This is the ultimate revelation of resistance: exposing power as an occult illusion. And this revelation is possible through willed imagination, transformative magic, and political sleight-of-hand. Accordingly, Starhawk urges activists to act “as if” their vision of a better world could be true, and to continually attempt, through street theatre and the imaginative use of ritual, such as a Spiral Dance that weaves past lines of police, to create “diversions and surprises,” to use humor to do the “unexpected” (99).

The ability of these activists in Seattle’s Direct Action Network to do the unexpected is certainly aided by vigorous training and organization based on small group consensus-based models. Describing this structure, the groups responsible for the blockade “were organized like the Craft has been organized for centuries – around small groups, affinity groups – kind of like covens-for-action.” Outlining the decision making process that eschewed top-down leadership,

Starhawk claims that “the power of this model, I’ve come to believe, is that the police simply

336 cannot see this kind of organization. Our plans were made in public meetings, there was no

way to keep our strategy secret – yet after months of preparation we were able to completely

surround and blockade the Convention Center and hold it closed for the first day of meetings”

(16, emphasis mine). According to Starhawk, the Direct Action Network’s specialization in decentralized power, in which no leaders are visible, made it impossible for those based in authoritarian power (the police, the government) to literally see the protesters’ strategy. Here we have a fascinating example of occult politics: political action performed by magickal practitioners (or at least an organization with magickal practitioners significantly in attendance) that is organized and enacted in such a way as to literally occult the action, hiding it from the eyes of authority. In this story, the WTO is the ultimate occult power with the ability to control passive citizens in just the way that Horkheimer and Adorno feared. Starhawk’s group, therefore, resists occult power with occult power, like the “ordinary people” of Michael Taussig’s

Colombian state who resist the magic of the government with their own magic ( Magic 122-123).

Anthropologists have often cited the use of magical practices in other cultures for their own kinds of resistance. Michael Taussig particularly describes the “magical” powers that the

State wields in Colombia, where “these very same powers of confusion and illusion can be turned against the state and used by ordinary people” ( Magic 123). In his imaginative, “fictional” ethnography, Taussig describes how these ordinary people might perform indigenous magical rites to help release political prisoners or to avoid military service. For Starhawk and other Pagan activists, the same principles apply. Reclaiming’s Winter 2000 issue of its quarterly magazine featured numerous short articles by the many people involved in the Seattle actions, relating various stories and experiences around the event, interspersed with dramatic pictures of signs, costumes, and protest props wielded by members. The stories range from moments of solidarity

337 on the front lines, arrest experiences and singing in jail with titles like “Magic in the Streets”

(“Magical Activism” 6); “A Drinking Spell” (7), an interesting story of members buying drinks

for and talking with trade ministers in a hotel bar about environmental issues; and “Keeping the

Home Fires Burning” (13), about Reclaiming Members in San Francisco who were present at the

Seattle protests “not physically, but psychically, deep-witnessing the energy, weaving invisibly

through the threads of the protests, feeding and strengthening the web.” In this latter rite,

participants read out members’ names who were in Seattle in order to establish an energetic

connection, poured ice on the grass in the letters WTO and then attempted to melt the ice with

candles and chants. The author of the article further acknowledges that the group did not melt all

the ice that night, and this was significant for them since work of this political scale takes time.

Throughout these narratives, practitioners constantly use magical metaphor and language to

describe political actions. 19

One final example of the confluence of magic and politics is a project by Isaac Bonewits, the founder of the ADF Druid grove and author of the foundational Real Magic . Anticipating the election year of 2004, and still reeling from the voter controversy surrounding the 2000 presidential election, Bonewits proposed “spells for democracy” as a counter to the “prayer warriors” of Washington DC, members of the religious right who use prayer as a way to promote their agenda. 20 Bonewits accuses these prayer warriors of the so-called “religious reich” of

19 However, the protests themselves created several conflicting narratives, even among magical practitioners. In an “open letter concerning Starhawk and the WTO protest,” the Council of Elders of the Temple of Pneuma shows support for the WTO protests, while suggesting that Starhawk and her group were arrested because they infringed upon others’ rights to free speech and assembly, something the Elders could not agree with, warning “When we begin to support each other in such actions simply because ‘she is one of us,’ we have lost credibility and should begin to rethink our situation” (Jones).

338 actually performing black magic through the use of imprecatory psalms, prayers meant to call down the wrath of God on their chosen targets. He also criticizes his fellow Pagans of the sin of

“scrupulosity,” the refusal to get involved or take action because of a fear of doing something wrong, i.e. fear of karmic backlash. Bonewits urges his fellow practitioners to take action through various magical means, as well as through more mundane activism. Bonewits makes the point that these workings are not trying to influence people’s free will regarding whom they will vote for, even though it is clear that he weighs heavily against the Bush administration. Among these are protection spells for candidates who may be the target of imprecatory psalms, guilt spells to encourage people to vote, revelation spells to expose corruption in the government, even a spell to “give Ralph Nader a vision” of the possible negative results of his running for president

(i.e. handing the presidency over to the Republicans). Bonewits accompanies each spell with an explanation of its non-magical equivalent. For instance, according to Bonewits, the protection spell is the magical equivalent of providing bodyguards for a candidate. The revelation spell is

“the magical equivalent of investigative journalism actually getting done by the mass media.”

Here, Bonewits targets the media as part of his campaign, and after President Bush won re- election, he continued to urge practitioners to concentrate their energies on specific journalists in order to “encourage” these journalists to investigate evidence of fraud. Throughout all this,

20 One such group, known as the Capitol Hill Prayer Alert even occupies a townhouse behind the Supreme Court building and have taken credit for such successes as the Supreme Court ruling which granted the presidency to Bush in 2000, or the confirmation of Justice Thomas in 1991 (Chambers). Another group, Intercessors for America, used to prayer in an attempt to influence the Florida recount of the 2000 presidential election (Wicker). This group released a so-called “philistine list” in the early 1990’s, consisting of liberal senators, representatives, and governors. The group encouraged its members to pray imprecatory psalms against these politicians, a technique often used by anti-abortionists against doctors who perform abortions. For instance, the website for Missionaries to the Unborn, a religious anti-abortion group, lists particular psalms their members can pray against abortionists (“Prayer”). Pat Robertson has also headed a group called Operation Supreme Court Freedom and has called for his followers to pray for the “replacement” of liberal judges with more conservative judges who are pro-life and anti-gay (“Pat Robertson”). In this interview, Robertson denies that he’s asking for people to pray for ill health or death of his targeted justices, though CNN correspondent Paula Zahn, his interviewer, acknowledges that many people have interpreted his comments as such.

339 Bonewits avers that he is not starting a magical war; rather he is “trying to get honest people to start fighting back in a war that’s been going on a long time” (Bonewits).

Starhawk and Reclaiming, Circle Sanctuary, and Isaac Bonewits all represent particular methods and styles of combining political action and magical work. While Starhawk and her group promote public awareness through protest and large group rituals and displays, Circle

Sanctuary supports the larger magical community through networking and civil action, and

Bonewits urges magical spell work on a personal level in what amounts to the magical equivalent of “every vote counts.” In all these cases, practitioners configure their political work as magic and their magic as political work, what Starhawk calls “transformational political praxis.” And practitioners often frame this political work as fighting the occult power of the opposition, whether it is the Religious Right, global organizations, or corporations. For activists like Starhawk, this marriage of magic and politics is not just practical; it has a religious element, for, as she claims, “if a movement of liberation does not address the spiritual part of us, then movements of repression will claim that terrain as their own” (262). Consequently, magickal practitioners often bring their spiritual practice, and its powerful symbols, to play in political action.

For instance, Starhawk describes a ritual working on the streets of Genoa, in which women stir up a cauldron, adding objects like rose petals and strands of hair – “anything that symbolizes the visions we hold of a different world.” In a 2003 anti-war protest, another

Reclaiming-based group calling themselves Witches Opposing War (WOW), marched in

“traditional” black witch costumes, complete with pointed hats and brooms. Thus, like the use of the witch trope by second-wave feminists, magickal activists invoke the classic cultural image in order to make associations with feminine resistant power. Despite the endless controversy

340 surrounding the image of the witch, including extreme reactions like Reverend Harvey’s in

Texas, it is still an image that holds power and even inspires fear. For Roberta Stewart, the

struggle for acknowledgement of her husband’s religion was centered on the pentacle, another

image that sometimes inspires fear because of its erroneous associations with Satanism. Indeed,

in the fight for recognition of Wicca, the pentacle becomes a synecdoche for Wicca itself, as

practitioners fight for its honored inscription on the cultural mind. And although at the end of

Webs of Power , Starhawk writes that in some instances she has chosen to call her practice “earth- based spirituality” or “feminist spirituality,” she argues “to move beyond our usual categories of thought, we need words that shock and confuse and shake up our usual thinking. Like any system, a system of thought needs pressure from outside to spur change. Words like ‘Witch’ and

‘magic’ and ‘spells’ keep us from getting too serious, from thinking too much of ourselves”

(262). Thus, like the trappings of magickal practice, the ceremonial robes, the incense, the costumes, and the daggers, the language and symbols of magic are ultimately only important insofar as they may affect the consciousness and perspective of those who take action or witness such actions. As Starhawk unequivocally establishes in her descriptions of difficult and sometimes violent political actions, these are experiences that change people. These are initiations.

Conclusion

In this chapter, I have attempted to survey the rough terrain of contemporary magical politics. This is necessary mainly because practitioner’s ideas about magic and ritual strongly imply certain sociopolitical viewpoints, mostly predicated on the notion that magic itself is a consciously willed “change,” to paraphrase Crowley’s popular definition of magickal practice.

341 The change that magickal ritual promotes is a transformation that operates on a deeply

personal level of consciousness. However, as we noted in our earlier definition of ritual,

borrowed from Ronald Grimes, ritual “should shape the reality outside its boundaries,

permeating it so that living itself is suffused with ritual values” ( Marrying 217). These ritual values are strongly apparent whenever magickal practitioners enter the socio-political sphere. As we have seen with Alex Owen’s formulations of occultism in Victorian England, magickal practice was strongly tied to ideas about the individual’s position in society and the corresponding responsibilities of that position. Many occultists translated those responsibilities as political viewpoints, such as Theosophist Anna Kingsford’s dedication to the antivivisectionist movement, or William Butler Yeats’ devotion to the Irish nationalist cause. This marriage of magick and politics is no less present in contemporary Paganism, as Druids fight to protect sacred sites in the United Kingdom, or Witches fight for women’s rights, the environment, and the anti-globalization movement. As we have seen with incidents in the military, prisons, the courts, and schools, the very act of performatively naming oneself a magickal practitioner in public has political consequences.

This act of “coming out” is invariably a threshold crossing, an emergence from the shadows of secrecy into the light of public scrutiny and, thus, an initiatory process. Starhawk’s description of her first activist experience in jail as an underworld journey and magickal initiation is especially apt here. In many ways, when practitioners choose to initiate into a tradition they are taking their responsibility as wielders of magickal power seriously. Just as practitioners struggle with notions of ethical behavior and “power from within” as opposed to

“power over,” they confront power and responsibility within initiation itself, as we will see in the final chapter. As the example of Witchcraft’s use of the Burning Times demonstrates, even

342 practitioners’ interpretations of the historical and mythological narratives from their own tradition contribute to initiation. When Witches commit to the practice and, often, religion of

Witchcraft, they tend to align themselves with a particular history of persecution and struggle.

Ultimately, for practitioners, it is irrelevant whether this history is factually accurate or meaningful in a more archetypal sense. One of the key factors of initiation is its ability to connect individuals to a broader community and a genealogy with at least an illusion of continuity. In the final chapter, we will more fully explore the details of this process as we finally enter the chamber of occult initiation.

343 Chapter Eight

The “Sensuous Moment of Knowing”: Initiation and the Performance of Occult

Transmission

With this chapter, we reach the end of our journey with an initiation, which is truly a beginning. When a candidate in a magickal group seeks initiation, it is usually after a long period of instruction and training, in which the candidate learns the history and discourse of the practice, and learns basic (and some advanced) techniques for raising energy and performing magical operations. The candidate will have participated in, and maybe even facilitated, group rituals where those techniques are brought into play. Through these rituals, and other events and social gatherings, the individual gets to know and understand the community that he or she is joining, including their values and ideals. Perhaps he even works with members of that community on charity events or joins with them in political activities like an anti-war protest.

When the candidate is ready, he or she may work towards a deeper connection to that community and to his practice by applying for the rite of initiation. This is a familiar narrative, even outside the occult world, as college students pledge to fraternities, doctors apply for residencies, businessmen work toward promotions, and graduate students work towards a PhD. In the exploration of occultism as performance, we have investigated the history and discourse of occultism, theorized on and seen examples of magick and ritual, and discussed the connection between magickal principles and the values and politics of the community. Now we are ready to approach the most mysterious performance of all: the initiation rite.

This performance is indeed mysterious, not least because it presents the candidate, not to mention the researcher, with significant lacunae. These are gaps in language, in performativity, in knowledge. Initiations are meant to be secret. Even if a candidate knows every step of the

344 initiation process beforehand, something that most groups tend to avoid, the candidate cannot ever truly “know” what the experience will be like. Even after the initiation is over, the main performative thrust of the rite, the elusive moment of initiation itself, the occult transmission known as “the charge,” remains ineffable. Practitioners who have experienced initiation often speak of feeling the effects of that rite years later, with seemingly insignificant moments echoing in profound resonance after a long process of psychological, emotional, and spiritual integration.

Initiates, even when they do not take oaths to keep their experience secret, struggle in their endeavor to articulate the initiatory event. Indeed, as Antoine Faivre asserts, when mystics and esotericists begin to speak about esotericism in the sense of “knowledge emanating from a spiritual center to be attained after transcending the prescribed ways and techniques,” those mystics tend to “maintain a discourse marked by subjectivity. And if they wish to escape this trait, they tend towards a form of normative or doctrinal discourse” ( Access 5). Therefore, much of our task involves a necessarily flawed approach, an attempt to “get at” or quantify a performance by analyzing its steps and stages, its performative moves, its underlying philosophy that is so dependant on language, space, and particular notions of the self and its relation to the group, and indeed, to some sense of the Divine. It is, truly, the microcosm attempting to assess its connection to the macrocosm.

Initiation is, indeed, a microcosm for this work, embodying an alchemical mixture of the various themes highlighted in each chapter. When considering initiation, we examine it as performative discourse, in which language creates an occult space through both its utterance and its silence. Language and speech are magical tools that allow for connection and separation through the application of a discursive mystical lexicon, as in some of the kabbalistic concepts we have previously discussed. We also treat initiation as a way to convey an accumulation of

345 histories and created traditions that integrate elements from legends and mythologies, occult correspondences and symbolic systems. Initiation also provides a framework for the use of magic, here understood as an ineffable and efficacious force that transforms the status of the initiate, both socially and spiritually, channeling the performative discourse of occultism through the use of gesture, dramatic utterance and ritual. Its participants perform roles in a drama that constructs the occult initiate, the candidate who seeks to participate in a broader magickal current, aligning himself with a community, a tradition, and a set of ideals. In this process, experienced members of a tradition position themselves in various roles that approximate power, acting from the place of insider identity. Ambivalent attitudes around this aspect of initiation reveal the rite as a performance of power, an issue facing many practitioners who struggle with notions of agency and self-empowerment as they attempt to apply their spiritual practice to their everyday lives.

Following this progression, this chapter will walk the reader through various stages of an initiation rite, with examples taken from Freemasonry, the Golden Dawn, Wicca, and my personal experiences in the hybrid traditions that initiated me. These stages involve magickal and performative moves that reinforce occult theories on the construction of the self and how that self gains knowledge. Secondly, we will discuss the importance of secrecy to initiation, particularly outlining how initiation rites themselves are functions of the discourse on secrecy, allowing for initiation to become, at once, both a discursive and non-discursive performative act.

Finally, we will explore questions of power that these rites raise, especially in the case of feminist witchcraft traditions that attempt to empower the individual while adhering to forms and concepts that ostensibly deploy hierarchical and patriarchal power structures.

346

Crossing the Threshold: The Stages of Occult Initiation

The rites of Freemasonry, the Golden Dawn, and Gardnerian Wicca all participate in a current established through the traditions of Western Hermeticism, though with varying differences in symbolism and levels of action. 1 The structure of these rites seems to generally

adhere to Van Gennep’s tri-partite scheme of separation, liminality, and reintegration. Typically,

the first stage of occult initiation involves the separation of the candidate from the group during

which the candidate prepares physically, emotionally, and spiritually. The candidate is then

brought into a kind of liminal state, as in the hoodwink example, and undergoes some kind of

trial in which he or she is tested. This test usually culminates in an interrogation, in which the

candidate proclaims his will to be initiated and takes some kind of an oath, sometimes swearing

not to reveal the secrets of the initiation. When the candidate proves himself worthy, the officers

of the group confer upon him an initiatory charge, the meaning of which may vary from group to

group or even from ritual to ritual. Most often this charge simply indicates a change of status,

from outsider to initiate, degree to degree, or initiate to clergy. With this charge usually comes a

blessing from the officers in their various roles within the initiation. Finally, the new initiate is

welcomed into the group or broader community. The Wiccan and Hermetic initiations I received

also follow a variation on this pattern. In this section, I will discuss various permutations on the

initiatory formula, including those I have researched in practical texts and manuals, and some

through interviews and my own experience.

1 Gardnerian Wicca, not surprisingly, fits this model since Gardner was heavily influenced by the rituals of Aleister Crowley, the OTO and the Golden Dawn (Hutton 220). Much of Wiccan practice, even those who don’t specifically follow the Gardnerian tradition, still owe much to Gardner’s reworking of these groups’ rites.

347 For the average contemporary practitioner of Western magick, the initiation occurs in

a separate space from the mundane society that would typically see magickal practice as outside

of the mainstream, as superstitious or even insidious. Yet the initiation rite dramatically models

for the candidate the processes of in group politics that he or she will undoubtedly face in the

workplace, at school, in the military, in civil service, or in any number of social clubs. Magickal

ritual continually works on both these levels, insulating the individual within a bounded space of imagination, creative visualization, and ritual performance, yet attempting to provide the individual with emotional, psychological, and spiritual tools to live their lives outside the circle.

Here is where occultism becomes embodied in practice. This process has two basic movements: the first is internal, a movement of secrecy kept within the confines of an initiatory group. The second moves outwards, where the secret takes on a more open quality, and an individual practitioner demonstrates his or her membership in the group, and represents that group to the outer community of magickal practitioners and the world at large. All of this action takes place within a highly charged, proscribed setting, sometimes elaborately mapped onto a temple space or perhaps simply staged in a grove of trees. In many traditions, including the Hermetic tradition that initiated me, initiators consider the physical temple space as merely the earthly manifestation of a more astral, universal temple space that they visualize with some detail. Thus initiations occur externally, within the group’s physical space, but also internally, within the candidate’s consciousness. Initiations ideally transform outsiders into insiders and perform the act on these various levels.

Thus, the establishment of physical space is usually an important precursor for initiation.

Many groups, especially those following a Hermetic model, refer back to stories about initiation in secret chambers in the ancient world, ranging from the rites of Osiris in Egyptian pyramids, to

348 the Eleusinian mysteries of Greece or the Mithraic mysteries of Ancient Rome, which supposedly took place in caves. 2 Although it is unclear whether the language or the ritual came first, spaces like these certainly facilitated the dramatic movement from darkness to light that permeates initiatory language and symbol. In fact, Frances Cornford, in his 1941 Oxford translation of Plato’s Republic , posits the widespread notion that the famous story of Plato’s

Cave is actually a description of an initiation rite, “through which the candidates for initiation were led to the revelation of sacred objects in a blaze of light” (xx). Thus, subsequent groups formed this imaginative speculation into actual performances. Freemasonry followed a similar pattern by calling their particular spaces temples, after the Temple of Solomon where their origin story took place. The ideal Masonic temple would be constructed to accommodate secrecy and initiation rites, complete with an antechamber to serve as a buffer between the outside world and the inner sanctum of the Masonic world, an actual liminal space (Duncan 8).

Once location is established, the initiating officers must ritually prepare the space to house the secret. Separation and purification must always precede initiation. Many occult initiation rites involve physically isolating the candidate in preparation for the rite. For example, in the initiation rite for the Knights Templar degree of Freemasonry, developed by Boston

Freemason Thomas Smith Webb in the early decades of the nineteenth century, the candidate awaiting initiation was led blindfolded into a small room with walls painted black. In this room, dubbed the “Chamber of Reflection,” the candidate would remove his blindfold to see the

2 These mostly lost rites, associated with ancient Greece and based on the stories of Demeter and Persephone, are mentioned in The Golden Bough and were a popular topic among early twentieth century anthropologists. See especially The Eleusinian Mysteries and Rites , Dudley Wright (Chicago: Ibis Press, 2003), a reprint of an early twentieth century treatise on the topic. Additionally, The Golden Dawn especially associated their rites with speculations about ancient Egypt and what they imagined was the actual purpose of the pyramids (Kraig 15-6).

349 shocking symbol of the skull and crossbones on the table, and then was expected to write a promise to defend Christianity and obey the rules of the order (Bullock 264). Similarly, before my own initiation, I was left to meditate in a separate room, confronted with the image of the

Death Tarot card. I was then led to a warm bath where I was to continue my meditation and await the officers who would robe me, blindfold me, and lead me to the ritual space. The bath is meant to purify the candidate before the rite and, for me, provided me with a kind of pre-natal environment and a slightly altered state similar to that achieved in sensory deprivation tanks. The bath, along with the use of incenses and oils, certainly contributes to rendering the candidate receptive to the initiation experience. These patterns of separation and meditation, which often involve images and experiences of birth and death, are common to initiation rituals in both contemporary Western magical traditions and more generic “rites of passage” that have infiltrated mainstream culture, as the result of popular anthropology, especially Van Gennep’s notion of the three stages of initiation (separation, transition, and incorporation) and Turner’s corresponding theory of liminality. 3

Meanwhile, the officers of the group prepare and purify the space where the initiation will happen. Within the York rite of Freemasonry, this preparation amounts to a roll call, a recitation of duties and oaths, and following a protocol not unlike a secular business meeting.

More magically oriented groups like the Golden Dawn similarly recite the duties that each officer fulfills, but the focus of the preparation is a purification of the room, a technique that

3 Self-help literature, like Robert Fulghum’s works, the New Age movement, and the men’s movement also contribute to this generic sense of initiation. Fulghum, a Unitarian Minister, is the best-selling author of many works, including All I Really Needed To Know I Learned In Kindergarten and notably From Beginning To End: The Rituals of Our Lives .

350 widely varies among groups and traditions, but usually consists of a blessing involving the

four primary elements, according to the particular ritual correspondences of the group. Like the

ritual liturgy I described previously, each of these elements would be wielded by a “quarter

officer,” so named for the elements assigned to each quarter, or cardinal points in the circle,

associated with the directions east (air), west (water), south (fire), north (earth). 4 In addition, at each of these four cardinal points, the officer will evoke the powers of that particular quarter.

Sometimes that power is a more general notion of qualities associated with the particular element; elemental beings associated with that element--gnomes in earth, for instance, or as the

Hermetic Order of Chicago preferred, archangels. 5 In many of these rites, a banishing ritual such as the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram would be used to purify the space first, followed by invocations at the quarters. In cases where the space is not already sanctified as a temple, practitioners will also trace a circle to enclose the ritual space and designate it as sacred.

Whatever the variation, officers in an initiation ceremony will more than likely go to great lengths to prepare the space for the candidate, so that by the time the candidate enters, a

4 The Golden Dawn tradition has established these correspondences between elements, directions, and magical tools, among other things, based on interpretations of Renaissance magic. Many, but not all, current magical traditions have adopted these correspondences, though some recent practitioners I have encountered question their Western European bias and argue for a more flexible and practical method of correspondence. For instance, I would speculate that water in the west could represent Western Europe’s orientation to the Atlantic Ocean – some Chicago pagans especially question this since Chicago’s major body of water, Lake Michigan, is to the east. Faerie Wiccan Francesca Dubie similarly criticizes these correspondences for being “too conceptual” and not entirely applicable to her practical experience (Hopman and Bond 77). The most variance occurs when assigning meanings to each of the directions. The traditional Golden Dawn correspondences explain that air is the intellect, water the emotions, fire the will, and earth the physical. Most practitioners I have spoken with on the subject agree that although these connections make intuitive sense, they are by no means absolute.

5 Again, a Golden Dawn correspondence exists between the elements and the archangels Raphael, Gabriel, Michael, and Uriel. One suspects that the Golden Dawn adapted ideas from John Dee, who was known for invoking angelic forces. The Hermetic Order of Chicago, in their standard opening procedure, call the archangels using John Dee’s Enochian language, and particular names and phrases associated with the archangels.

351 significant amount of activity has palpably raised what practitioners would call “the energy”

of the room.

Immediately before the rite, officers from the group prepare the candidate through

various forms of undress and ritual robing. In the text on the York rite, the officers instruct the

candidate to remove his coat, shoes, stockings, vest, cravat, and pants. Along with the hoodwink

and a rope around his neck called a cable-tow, he is given a set of “drawers” to wear with one leg

rolled up and a slipper to wear on his right foot. His left arm would be removed from the shirt,

exposing his arm and breast (28). In most cases, the candidates are helped into some form of

ritual robe. This act implies two shifts. First, robing itself indicates a shift from mundane

activities to sacred ceremony. 6 Hermetic Order initiates would bring their robes with them

wherever ritual is held, and don them before the ritual begins. The wearing of a robe, with its

accompanying cord, also indicates a shift in focus if not status. In other words, the robe presents

the candidate as no longer just a passive participant in the public rituals but an active member

who may potentially experience the ritual on a deeper level. For the Hermetic Order of Chicago,

a candidate would usually wear a particularly colored robe depending on the level of initiation. 7

When the candidate is robed and often blindfolded, she is led towards the main ritual space. With the Hermetic Order rites I witnessed and experienced, the officer would often intentionally

6 Luhrmann notes the variation among groups who perform “skyclad,” that is, nude, and those who utilize robes in order to feel like they are doing something “different” than what they would in mundane life (229).

7 The Hermetic Order of Chicago had “elemental initiations,” corresponding to Earth, Water, Fire, and Air similar to the Golden Dawn’s initiatory levels of Zelator, Theoricus, Practicus, and Philosophus. Each of these grades focuses on a particular aspect of an individual’s development. Earth degree focuses on the material and the physical, Water on the emotional and psychological, Fire on individual will and leadership, and Air on more intense magical pursuits. In my experience, groups that utilize these elemental grade initiations often indicate their level by the color robes they wear. Members of the Hermetic Order did not strictly adhere to this practice, however. The cords that members wear were often more likely to indicate their initiatory level.

352 disorient the candidate, leading her into walls (or trees if the rite was outside on their private

land). Alan Salmi, as one of the senior clergy in the Hermetic Order of Chicago, would often

fulfill this role, traditionally known as the “psychopomp,” a guide between the worlds. 8 His training in psychotherapy and hypnosis made him an especially appropriate choice for this function, since the process involves what he calls “psychological imprinting.” 9 According to

Salmi, “the more confused or thrown off from their normal state of mind, the better chance you of have of imprinting them with what you are about to do.” Salmi believes that a certain amount of nervous expectation is necessary for the ritual to have a strong impact, emphasizing the liminality of the candidate: “We’re reinforcing [that] you’re not what you were, but you’re not what you’re going to be yet. It’s a metaphor of where you have been without what we’re about to show you.” In other words, the blindfolding and disorientation serve several purposes. First, the physical and kinesthetic confusion are intended to make the candidate more deeply aware of the events surrounding him, creating a receptive state in the individual. Secondly, the blindfold and disorientation have a performative purpose: through symbolic action, the performance indicates a spiritual “blindness” in which the candidate has been fumbling in the dark, and from which the initiation will free him. Salmi explains that he also reinforces this metaphor through the use of storytelling and humor, guiding the candidate to the ritual space and reminding her she is on a spiritual path, literally and figuratively. These techniques, he claims, helps keep the candidate aware and in the moment.

8 Psychopomp is a Greek term and one of the titles of Hermes, indicating his role as a guide for souls to the underworld.

9 Personal interview, 12 July 2004.

353 When the candidate eventually reaches the threshold of the ritual space, the ritual officers, who usually challenge the candidate in some way, stop her at knifepoint, a tradition borrowed from Freemasonry (Hutton 56). 10 In some cases, this challenge may simply be an affirmation of the candidate’s individual will. A typical question might be “do you come here of your own free will” or “is it your desire to be initiated into this group.” At this point, the officers may require the candidate to swear never to reveal what they see and experience in this rite.

These oaths of secrecy can be quite elaborate in the Masonic tradition, some of which spell out terrible tortures to the deserving soul who breaks the oath (Bullock 17). 11 The York Rite more tamely uses a metaphorical comparison. The officer exclaims: “On entering this Lodge for the first time, I receive you on the point of a sharp instrument pressing your naked left breast, which is to teach you, as it is a torture to your flesh, so should the recollection of it ever be to your mind and conscience, should you attempt to reveal the secrets of Masonry unlawfully” (Duncan 30). In my experience, initiation rituals that use this technique emphasize this metaphorical aspect and, although the knife may physically surprise the candidate, no element of danger seems to exist for the candidate. However, Salmi claims that the knife is a reminder of more dangerous times when secrecy was essential for a group’s survival, sometimes even physically. Also, he suggests, even if a candidate does not consciously feel in danger, an unconscious part of the mind might still react with a defensive anxiety that keeps the candidate focused and aware, another aid to the psychological imprinting desired by the initiators.

10 Ritual knives have a long history of uses in the Western tradition. Though many practitioners have speculated that the knife was used at some point for sacrificial purposes, it often serves a different role. Celebrants use their “athame” to draw the ritual circle in the air. In other instances, practitioners regard the knife as a symbol for the element of air, for the intellect and the powers of the mind (Starhawk, Spiral 76-7).

11 As noted earlier, these tortures may be related to the typical tortures of regicides in the 18 th century (Ridley 20).

354 Salmi’s experience as a Freemason must certainly play a role in his understanding of these ritual performances. The initiation rites of Freemasonry are full of such drama. In the most elaborate of the York rites, the Master Mason, or third degree, the candidate takes part as a central figure in a re-enactment of the Masonic origin story: the interrogation and murder of

Hiram Abiff, the legendary builder of Solomon’s temple. Blindfolded and accosted by several

“ruffians,” the candidate must deny their demands for the secret Masonic word. As a result, the officers playing the antagonist role hit him on the head with a bag, and then trip him up so that he falls into a canvas suspended by the other members. The ritual text assures the reader that the candidate is unharmed, though “in many instances, badly frightened” (106). Following the

“murder” is a trial in which the ruffians are found guilty, and an elaborate funeral ceremony complete with hymns and prayers. Similarly, Bullock describes the Royal Arch ceremony for the

Knights Templar degree as “participatory theatre” in which the candidate is subjected numerous trials and challenges (263). One of these is the so-called “living arch” in which candidates would be tied and forced to crawl through a gauntlet of kicking and poking perpetrated by the rite’s officers (270). According to Bullock, these challenging ceremonies

expressed the anxieties and inner conflicts created by the attempt to live up to [the

fraternity’s] expectations in a rapidly changing society. . . . Instead of the polished self-

presentation of gentleman sure of their standing, the higher-degree rituals portrayed a

cold world where success came only by struggle, an experience made bearable only by

the honor won by activity and the refreshment offered by warm private spaces. (253)

Thus, these ceremonies were not about power magically bestowed upon the candidate by some divine force, but rather a power that only comes by an application of individual will, struggling for position. In most cases, however, this struggle is dramatized . As Nikki Bado-Fralick

355 maintains when she describes the use of Death imagery in a Wiccan rite, this is not a symbolic death, but rather a performed death, in which the candidate himself participates bodily

(135). As the Masonic rites demonstrate, officers create a dramatic situation and pretend to carry it out, all the while ensuring that the initiate is never in any real danger. This performance certainly seems to have a precedent within popular understandings of tribal rites of passage, where the classic story pits the young warrior and his wits against nature and the elements. Yet these rites are an Enlightenment version of the individual struggling against society rather than the natural world. One wonders if this same spirit is motivates college fraternity hazing, the trials of military boot camp, or the challenges of the young executive in the corporate world. Yet the most significant trope of Masonic initiation, is the murder and resurrection of the candidate, thus establishing initiation as the death and rebirth of the initiate onto a higher spiritual plane.

Paul Tuitéan and Estelle Daniels, in their practical text Essential Wicca , suggest that the challenge, what they call “the ordeal,” is partially to remind the candidates of the Inquisition, when witches were interrogated and tortured. They further mention that one of the authors had been subpoenaed in a lawsuit and her experience with the ordeal helped prepare her to handle the deposition. Tuitéan and Daniels also mention that the ordeal may take many forms depending on the candidate, giving initiators the opportunity to challenge the initiate on specific personal issues. For instance, a candidate who doubted her creative ability “was given modeling clay and told to create a Goddess figurine” and another whose discomfort with being skyclad was challenged by being asked to dance with others who were naked. This process, according to the authors, “helped break down a barrier and initiate a paradigm shift” (245). Thus, whatever dramatic structure is chosen for the rite, the intent is for the candidate to view the challenge as

356 symbolic of the change he is undergoing within the initiation, while attempting to create an emotional and psychological imprint through performance.

For typical initiations into the Hermetic Order of Chicago, the trial and challenge period of the rite was relatively short. 12 The focus of their rites seemed to be more on blessing and passing the actual charge. The exact wording and accompanying actions for these blessings are highly individualized, though the structure follows a set pattern. The officers representing the four elemental quarters purify and bless the candidate similarly to how they bless the room. As with any of these blessings or invocations, the actual liturgy depends on the inspiration of the officer involved. Thus, unlike the more codified initiation rites of Freemasonry and the Golden

Dawn, the Hermetic Order of Chicago’s rituals depended more prominently on improvisation from a significant repertoire of images, correspondences, and knowledge of the initiate. This improvisation extended even more significantly to the main celebrants of the rite, who often represented the masculine and feminine divine force through taking on the persona of a particular god and goddess, another instance of the importance use of aspecting in magickal rites. The priestess and priest were responsible for leading the rite and blessing the candidate by standing in for the divine.

Once the liturgical elements in the rite are complete, what remains is the most crucial, and therefore the most secret element of initiation: the “passing of the charge.” This is the moment where language and description escape us in the face of divine revelation, where even conversations with practitioners who are willing to talk about every other aspect of initiation

12 However, I have participated in other rites of an initiatory nature within the Order that do require significant challenges for the candidate. These rites were not standard degree initiations, but rather more specific events involving that particular individual’s development.

357 grind to a halt. 13 In fact, to speak of this initiatory charge, the only language I can seem to

apply is that of mysticism and magic. One term that comes to mind is energy transference,

sometimes physically manifesting so that the candidate literally “feels” charged up, energized. In

other cases, it may be more cerebral. Sometimes it may be merely symbolic, with a mundane

performative action representing a whole discourse of trial and achievement, like the crowning of

a king or handing a diploma to a student. But the what makes these performatives felicitous is the

ritual framework, the “charged” atmosphere of the setting in which the action occurs, a liminal

space where small moves have broad consequences. Writing on the Corpus Hermeticum as a literary, initiatic model, Arthur Versluis speaks of the dialogue that takes place between an initiator or revealer and initiate or witness in an “interworld (mesocosm) of revelation, and are between one who embodies knowledge and one who seeks to embody it” ( Restoring Paradise

22). This “interworld” is often a dream state, or a kind of altered state of consciousness, similar to the liminal space that occult initiation rites attempt to reproduce. This is the moment where pedagogical transmission plays a role. Exactly what is transmitted and how varies widely between groups. For instance, much of the instruction a Masonic candidate receives is actually included in the ritual. Throughout Masonic initiations, officers show the candidate various symbols, depending on the particular degree, and extensive explanations of them. For instance, the third degree or Master Mason ceremony includes a lengthy explanation of the Mason’s apron and the symbolic meaning of the trowel as a Mason’s tool. Each degree also has its own passwords, signs, and grips, secret handshakes that demonstrate the degree of each member. In

13 Alan Salmi, for instance, was comfortable talking about initiation in general, but would not speak about this particular aspect.

358 addition to the elaborate dramas within these rites, Masonic initiations are replete with

lengthy lectures explaining the duties of the candidate, the symbolic meaning of the stories and

re-enactments, and the principles of Masonry as demonstrated through symbols. 14

However, subjective experience is what primarily inspires the candidate in the moment of

“passing the charge.” This is the stage where the dialectic of secrecy and revelation most significantly comes into play, as in the Golden Dawn ritual raising and lowering of the hoodwink. According to Israel Regardie, Golden Dawn rites were designed to have just such a psychological impact from the use of symbols, props, and colors. 15 In a significant account of the actual space the initiate inhabits during initiation into the Golden Dawn, Regardie describes the so-called Vault of the Adepti and its use as dramatic scenery for the initiatory charge in the

Adeptus Minor initiation rite. 16 The Vault, constructed based on the specifications of the The

Fama Fraternatitas , consists of seven walls (representing the seven medieval planets) with a round altar in the center, which supposedly held the unsullied corpse of the movement’s mythical founder, Christian Rosenkreutz ( What You Should Know 84). The pastos, as the altar is called, is also referred to as the tomb of Osiris, a myth that Regardie appropriately relates to other sacrificed gods like Mithras and Christ. Regardie also explores the connection between the

Vault and the feminine: divine rebirth, the Great Mother. Again, the images of death and rebirth

14 Masonry’s symbols and rituals follow Enlightenment theories about pedagogy, including Locke’s theory of eye, ear and touch (Bullock 139-40).

15 Golden Dawn practice holds that certain juxtaposed colors would create an etheric charge around an object. These so-called “flashing colors,” like fluorescent red and green, would often be used to incur both a psychological and physiological response in the viewer (Greer, Circles 122).

16 The Adeptus Minor grade, the first degree of the so-called “Inner Order” of the Golden Dawn was only achieved after the candidate had passed through the Neophyte ritual and the four elemental grades of the Outer Order (Regardie, Golden Dawn xiii).

359 pervade the initiatory scene. For initiates, the mere sight of this chamber, with its intricately

painted symbols lovingly explained by Regardie, assists in creating the desired effect, described

as “a psychological spasm” (84). If that isn’t enough, however, when the tomb is uncovered, the

Chief Adept or Hierophant emerges, “as though to represent the aspirant’s higher Self which is

confined to the personality which wanders blindly, lost in the dark wilderness” (85). Therefore,

in the initiatory moment, dramatic embodiment complete with script, costume and mise-en-scène

works to affect the candidate.

Again, as in the alchemical illustrations that Versluis describes, the experience of

initiation from the perspective of the candidate is one involving a complex reading of text and

performance. For this operation, Faivre suggests the term “active imagination,” a process

between believing and knowing that “lets the disciple escape both from the sterility of purely

discursive logic, and from the rule-free extravagances of fantasy or sentimentality” ( Access 20).

The initiate is caught somewhere in the middle floating in a sea of images on a raft of a charged imagination particular to him or her and shaped by the previous discourses of teaching. Thus, transmission occurs in both the discursive form and in the non-discursive, imaginal form.

Golden Dawn practice significantly deepened the complexity of Renaissance Hermeticism with knowledge from the new field of psychology. Some of the later members, like Regardie and

Dion Fortune were trained in psychotherapy and were avid readers of Freud, Jung, and Reich. In scenes like the emergence of the hierophant, the Golden Dawn ritualists embodied the concrete, frozen tableaus associated with Renaissance Hermeticism in a ritualized, magical moment of transgression in which force passes through and empowers the initiate.

To explain the nature of magical force present in initiation, Regardie quotes Jung’s commentary on the classic Eastern mystical text, the Golden Flower :

360 Magical practices are the projections of psychic events which, in cases like these,

exert a counter influence on the soul, and act like a kind of enchantment of one’s own

personality. That is to say, by means of these concrete performances , the attention or

better said the interest, is brought back to an inner sacred domain which is the source and

goal of the soul. This inner domain contains the unity of life and consciousness which,

though once possessed, has been lost and must now be found again. (qtd. in Regardie,

What You Should Know 67, emphasis added)

Initiation here consists of concrete performances, actions and utterances given power in a particular space. Therefore, the two components essential for the transformation inherent to initiation consist of the magical force itself and the setting within which it can act.

Regardie’s use of Jung’s words, along with his elaborate descriptions of the Golden Dawn temple, implies an important relation between force and the space for its action. This space must ultimately be both the goal for magical force and its origin, with the candidate as the conduit.

Attention and interest, as Jung states it, are thus directed inwardly towards an unseen origin, a mythical space of unity.

In a method akin to psychoanalysis, the Golden Dawn initiations involve an objectification process for the initiate. Regardie describes the role of the initiating officers as psychic projections, not unlike characters in dreams that represent some aspect of the initiate:

Through the admittedly artificial or conventional means of a dramatic projection of these

spiritual principles in a well-ordered ceremony a reaction is induced in consciousness.

This reaction is calculated to arouse from their dormant condition those hitherto latent

faculties represented objectively by the officers. Without the least conscious effort on the

part of the aspirant, an involuntary current of sympathy is produced by this external

361 delineation of spiritual parts which may be sufficient to accomplish the purpose of the

ceremony. ( What You Should Know 67)

Thus, the initiating officers, through a ritually symbolic performance, intend to awaken in the individual initiate the aspects that they embody in the rite. This kind of embodiment has been a constant method in many initiatory rituals I have experienced. Often, individuals may take on particular god forms, as in rites based on planetary magic, where officers would take on the roles of Mercury, Mars, Saturn, etc. In other cases, individuals may embody certain emotional states or social roles. For instance, a rite devised for me by the men in the Hermetic Order before my wedding involved several of the men each taking on specific roles, embodying typical fears about marriage. Here again, space was essential to the ritual performance since the rite took place at an outdoor festival. The men designed the rite so that I would literally have to cross a bridge leaving behind those fears, embodied by the other single men in the group, while I was welcomed by the married men in the group into a grove and burning fire. Nikki Bado-Fralick illuminates this kind of initiatory experience, describing how “spatiality and movement through the landscape play prominent roles in the initiation described, offering to us a rich metaphorical landscape that has implications for how community is constructed and understood from different perspectives” (124). Seeing my male friends embody these principles and placed like set pieces on a natural landscape did have a profound effect on me, as I felt like both an audience of one and the recipient of a deep initiatory lesson with regards to my role in the community and as a husband and father.

This process seems like a sort of performative version of Frazer’s law of sympathy, in which like acts upon like through mimesis and representation. How sympathy functions in this case, however, is unique because both the tool used and the object acted upon are the embodied

362 spirit in human form, rather than on an inanimate object, the typical tool of practical magic.

The results of the initiation may be felt on the physical realm, but their primary effect is on the

psyche. 17 Regardie goes on to point out that this act of sympathy works on an aesthetic level,

“quite apart from what could be called the intrinsic magical virtue” ( What You Should Know 67).

After a lengthy description of the symbolism involved, Regardie clarifies this intrinsic virtue

somewhat: “Despite the fact that the whole of this intricate symbolism can hardly be realised by

the candidate at the time of his initiation, its intrinsic virtue is such that unconsciously as an

organised body of suggestion it is perceived and noted and strikes the focal centre” ( What You

Should Know 70). Thus, Regardie, a trained psychotherapist himself, interprets initiation in terms of both the aesthetic and the therapeutic, in much the same way as hypnotic suggestion, in which the therapist works with images on the patient’s subconscious level.

Similarly, Michael Taussig has reminded us of the intricate relation between the mimetic power of sympathetic magic to the process of knowing and identity ( Mimesis xiii). According to

Taussig, sympathy, “a palpable, sensuous connection between the very body of the perceiver and the perceived” ( Mimesis 21), by its very inexact nature moves diffusely among the bodies of the perceiver and the plural perceived, the objects and the officers. Theorizing on Adorno and

Hegel, Taussig further explores the moment of Contact that I would similarly locate in the initiatory experience. This “sensuous moment of knowing includes a yielding and mirroring of the knower in the unknown, of thought in its object” ( Mimesis 45). Yet in that moment of reflection the power equation is direct and focused, from the divine source, through the ritual and

17 Here, the initiatory magickal act seems to run counter to the typical operation which we will discuss next chapter, in which magickal force acts upon a symbolic object and through the astral plane to produce effects on the physical plane, e.g. a monetary windfall, a new lover, etc.

363 the officers, to and upon the initiate. Further, Taussig claims the transgressive ritual act can simultaneously create and dissolve this magical substance Western philosophy refers to as Being:

“It is the precariously contained explosion of the transgressive moment that allows for and indeed creates the ‘mimetic slippage’ whereby reproduction jumps to metamorphosis, whereby the duplicating power of spirit (image) is also a self-transforming power . . . ” ( Mimesis 126).

During initiation, the mimetic slippage inherent in the performed act of emerging from darkness

(womb/tomb: the birth/death relation) sets up an embodied image for initiation, thus providing the vehicle for personal transformation.

What then, is the origin of the “psychological spasm,” the “precariously contained explosion of the transgressive moment”? From where does the initiatory charge emerge? What is the nature of that charge and how is it affected by its source, or its destination for that matter?

With these kinds of questions, the mystery often remains. In many cases, the initiator plays a role not unlike a typical Catholic priest, who stands in for the hidden authority of Divine power and wields that power in order to confer blessings on the candidate. Yet, unlike receiving sacraments in the Catholic Church, for instance, the initiatory charge supposedly empowers the candidate with the ability to play that role himself, which draws parallels to a type of ordination ceremony.

Althea Northage-Orr, founder of the Hermetic Order of Chicago, explains that any initiate can become a priest or priestess. Once the charge is passed, the initiate is free to use it how she sees fit, like a Master teaching a skill to an apprentice. The teacher must pass on the knowledge to the student in an indirect way. Using the example of theology and citing the philosopher Psuedo-

Dionysus, Jacques Derrida claims that the teacher “must practice not a double language, but the double inscription of his knowledge . . . a double mode of transmission; on the one hand unspeakable, secret, prohibited, reserved, inaccessible or mystical, ‘symbolic and initiatory’; on

364 the other hand, philosophic, demonstrative, capable of being shown” (“Denials” 94).

Derrida’s statement perfectly describes the secrecy/revelation dialectic at the heart of initiation, where practical and esoteric knowledge commingle.

To facilitate this alchemical combination of knowledge, Hermetic Order rituals utilized both esoteric and natural symbolism, but tended to be much less didactic than Masonic rites, mostly because their symbolic system was broader and less detailed, and because a candidate would have already achieved a certain level of knowledge through instruction. Further, since much of their rites were based on inspiration and improvisation, a set program of instruction was not followed. 18 However, a few consistent pieces reoccurred. In these rituals, after the charge had been passed, the candidate was presented with the appropriately colored cord for that degree, cut to the candidate’s height. The robe would be accompanied by a special cord, made from yarn in the colors of the elemental degree the initiate was entering. The participants in the rite would prepare the cord beforehand, and during the rite, cut the cord to the initiate’s height, a practice borrowed from Gardnerian Wicca, which in turn was borrowed from Freemasonry, known as

“taking the initiate’s measure.” Though Wiccans describe this as a ritual that “symbolically

‘binds’ the candidate to the coven” (Tuitéan and Daniels 246), the Hermetic Order emphasized the cord as a community “connection,” rather than the more aggressive notion of binding. This sense of connection was demonstrated in the Order’s Rite of Dedication, a precursor to initiation

18 As Educational Director for the Hermetic Order of Chicago, I assisted in developing an educational program for the first degree of initiations, consisting of exercises and a series of pertinent topics that the candidate must respond to in writing or dialogue. This program reflected a changing environment within the Order in which individual instruction was no longer possible due to the growing size of the group, and the over-commitment of its teachers. Thus, the intent of this program was to ensure that the candidate would be adequately prepared prior to initiation. Unfortunately, the new candidates who expressed interest in initiation before the demise of the group were fairly resistant to this process.

365 that would be open to the general public, when the members of the group would all touch the cord as a blessing was said over the candidate. 19

To supplement this notion of a communal bond, Hermetic Order members provided an opportunity within the rite for individual members to tell their own initiation stories. Generally in the order in which they were originally initiated in the group, each individual initiate would approach the new initiate bearing his or her athame, the ritual knife. The old and new initiates would touch their knives, symbolizing the connection between them as initiates, while telling the story of their initiatory genealogy and the circumstances under which they were initiated. This exchange served as a way to give the new initiate a sense that a history exists in which the candidate is now taking part. It was also one of the only times in the Hermetic Order rituals where rank was rehearsed, not to reinforce a sense of hierarchy, but rather to provide a narrative continuity. According to Salmi, this practice provides the candidate with the articulation of a tradition and of the candidate’s new position within an established genealogy. 20

A major part of this establishment of individual identity within the group is the moment of naming. In the Hermetic Order rites, the candidate would approach the priestess who would confer a name on the candidate, usually selected from a particular mythology (for instance,

Egyptian, Greek, Celtic, Arthurian). Naming and the creation of identity have always been a

19 The Rite of Dedication, which I do not focus on here, is sometimes used as a statement of intent to initiate, but for the Hermetic Order and its surrounding community, it more often symbolized a general intent to “follow the path of light.” This path was interpreted broadly and did not commit the dedicant to following the particular teachings and practices of the Hermetic Order. Thus the Order performed many dedication rites while I was a member, but only a handful of those rites led to further initiations. Nikki-Bado Fralick similarly writes about her coven’s dedication rite, noting it as “an important part of the screening process for both Witches and students and represents a significant movement towards the incorporation of a potential initiate within the coven” (87-88).

20 This is where I discovered that the Hermetic Order had lineages to both the Golden Dawn and Gardnerian Wicca, two aspects that blended heavily in their practice. In particular, Donna Schulz and Herman Enderle, members of the Pagan Way movement who had migrated to Chicago, had been mentors to the Hermetic Order’s elders (Clifton 24).

366 major part of the Western Occult tradition. The website for current incarnation of the Golden

Dawn unequivocally states “initiation initiates the living magical being within us; it awakens and

stirs to life that portion of ourselves that exists beyond what we see and hear in our material

plane” (“Truth about the Stages”). Of course, this notion can easily turn into an exploration of

ego. Alphonse Louis Constant attempted to translate his name into Hebrew, resulting in Eliphas

Lévi. The Golden Dawn’s William Westcott claimed degrees he did not have, while Samuel

Liddell, the most eccentric of them all, spuriously claimed both military experience, and Jacobite

lineage, adding MacGregor and Mathers to his name and parading around in a faux Highland

costume. The forming of a new identity was essential to membership in the Dawn. One of the

first things a candidate did was to come up with an elaborate motto to represent himself, usually

in Latin. Afterwards, in official documents, initiates were often only referred to as their initials,

thus preserving their “real” identity and legitimizing their created one. For instance, Yeats was

known as D.E.D.I. (Demon Est Deus Inversus or Demon is God Reversed) and one of Aleister

Crowley’s many names for himself was his Golden Dawn motto, “Perdurabo” (meaning “I will

endure to the end”). Modernist secret societies like the Dawn often featured members of both

cultural privilege, which might include a taste for colonialism and Orientalism, and theatrical

society, with a tendency for ostentation and pretentiousness, as evidenced by Regardie’s example

of the initiate who wore her secret ritual gear to a costume party ( What You Should Know 30).

Under these circumstances, individual identity becomes fluid and changing ethnicity is as simple as donning a new costume. Identity changing becomes, in essence, a magical act. Robert

Anton Wilson, in an introduction to Regardie’s biography of Crowley, describes the magician’s recommendation that an individual “adopt two ‘opposite’ personalities, such as a vegetarian pacifist and a chauvinistic militarist, key each one to a different piece of jewelry (a talisman or a

367 ring) and change his verbal opinions, his outer behavior, and his more subtle inner responses,

depending on which piece of jewelry he was wearing” (xii). Crowley often went native when he

traveled, while still maintaining his elitism by creating elaborate and absurd names and titles for

himself. Although the goal of Crowley’s individual magical work was ostensibly the removal of

ego, the success of this venture is certainly debatable. In describing his training, Crowley

borrows from the alchemists the term “Great Work.” He also calls it the “Knowledge and

Conversation with the Holy Guardian Angel,” in which the angel is the higher, true self. Yet for

Crowley, the angel was a ghost writer of sorts, since he often attributed his more obscure works,

like the apocalyptic Book of the Law , to his channeling of Aiwass, his guardian angel. 21

Crowley’s goal, however, should not be confused with the kind of self-actualization popular with New Age practices. David Halperin, in outlining Foucault’s project in The Care of the Self , delineates the development of the self in classical Greek culture from the self-absorption of current trends: “In the classical Greek world, after all, the purpose of self-fashioning was not to discover one’s “true self” but to work on one’s self so as to transform it into a vehicle of personal autonomy and social preeminence. Self-regulation was a specific strategy for gaining power over oneself and over others; it was not an ancient forerunner of New Age mysticism.”(74). With this in mind, it is tempting to suggest that Crowley was an example of such a practitioner who attempts to work on the self can be seen as a socio-political strategy.

This kind of strategy is particularly important in Pagan communities and religions, especially

Wicca. In A Community of Witches , sociologist Helen Berger presents a particular Wiccan naming ritual she witnessed as an example of transformative practice. Working from the

21 Crowley was very interested in Dee’s angelic operations, sometimes considering himself a reincarnation of Kelly, and a major turning point in his magical career was when he attempted Dee’s Enochian calls (Sutin 199).

368 modernist notion of self-identity, she comments on the various opinions of sociologists on new religions, especially ones based on healing and therapeutic self-transformation. She cites articles by James Beckford, who disputes charges of narcissism on new religions, claiming that these religions tend to support middle-class training for specific professional rules. The main arena for the performance of this particular occult identity politics is, inevitably, ritual: “Rituals are in part organized around changing the self, in relationship to changes that are occurring in the individual’s life trajectory and in terms of changes within the larger society” (29). Luhrmann similarly describes the magical name as a tool with which the practitioner can separate the mundane and the spiritual world. Magical names are used “in circle” (a Pagan term meaning the time during ritual or when one is gathered with other practitioners for magical work) to indicate a different space is being entered. Luhrmann adds “The crucial feature of the secret name is that it not only separates two ‘worlds’ but allows magicians to move between them with ease. The straddled separation makes the magicians feel special. They acquire identities more dramatic than those of their daily lives, identities in which they have great power and influence” (230).

Yet these names are more than just comic book “secret identities.” In many cases they become psychological and archetypal templates. Berger tells of a particular priestess who instructs her initiates to be very cautious about a selecting a magical name, “as the name provides a framework for their personal growth” (35). The names that Pagans choose ultimately are either mythic, in the form of god and goddess names, or anthropomorphic, as in the case of Native

American-type names, like Three Blade Jaguar, the recipient of the naming ritual Berger describes. These names “have lost whatever meaning they may have within the symbolic system of the culture from which they are derived. The name becomes reinterpreted within a new context” (36).

369 In many cases I have witnessed, especially in my time as an initiate of the Hermetic

Order of Chicago, names given at initiations take on particular resonance at different periods in

the practitioner’s life. If the names are mythic, for instance, practitioners achieve fresh insight

by learning previously unknown information about that mythical character, or even by

confronting a radical new interpretation of the myth. For instance, the name Persephone, whose

myth is the foundation for the Eleusinian mysteries of Greece, can have many different qualities,

depending on the interpretation of the myth. As noted earlier, the major differences seem to

revolve around whether Persephone entered the underworld willingly with Hades, or if she was

raped in both the classical and modern sense of the word. Indeed, Phyllis Curott, in her best-

selling autobiography Book of Shadows , grapples with just this question when she considers taking on the Roman version of the name, Proserpina (280). These names, some chosen, some given, often do provide a sort of gestalt framework that colors events in an initiate’s life. Curott’s story provides convincing anecdotal evidence, as she relates her struggles as one of the only women attorneys in a high-powered New York corporate law firm, subject to her boss’s (the aptly named John Hadus) unwanted sexual advances and power games. Therefore, naming in these cases is both a political and a performative act. In the case of Aleister Crowley, naming becomes a method for assuming a false identity based on both classist and colonialist pretensions, as well as delusions of grandeur. Yet, as we see in these Pagan examples, this sleight-of-hand identity politics does not necessarily have to be so insidious. The difference between the cases Crowley and Phyllis Curott certainly seems to be one of intention. Whether to use cultural assimilation to raise one’s social status, or to help one cope with a situation of oppression, naming provides power. The fact that there are significant differences in motivation is important, yet the method for all is the same: the performance of self-transformation. The fact

370 that in many of these cases, naming is associated with rites of initiation is where the spheres of identity politics and ritual performance converge. These names can provide a protective shield, keeping the true identity of an initiate hidden, like the Golden Dawn acronyms. However, in many cases, it is the names themselves that are secret. With the Hermetic Order, it was very rare that I heard members’ magickal names discussed.

Secrecy, of course, is one of the main elements of initiation rites. Yet, this act of not- speaking is still performative, as it both reproduces the discourse that the initiate has been learning and models a particular occult strategy for processing knowledge. Within the Golden

Dawn, what the candidate experiences in initiatic space is supplemented with a great number of texts, many specifically written by higher Order members, about philosophy, mysticism, and magic, while being guided through a graded system of initiations, beginning with the neophyte ritual. These lessons are further reinforced by the repetition of basic exercises, like the Lesser

Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram or the Middle Pillar, that reproduce many of the ritual patterns of the main initiation rite. However, according to the oath taken by Golden Dawn initiates, they are forbidden to discuss even the most mundane aspects of rituals that have been in published form for over half a century (“Golden Dawn”). 22 To add to the mystery, the website for a current incarnation of the Golden Dawn claims that what Crowley and Regardie published was all Outer

Order material and not Inner Order material, which is still secret and has been kept away from the public. The website declares in bold letters: “ the motherload of Golden Dawn and Inner

22 I discovered this while attempting to discuss initiation with several friends who I knew to be members of a Golden Dawn temple. Even though I have read extensively on Dawn traditions and rituals and have been initiated into and practiced with Hermetic groups loosely modeled on the Golden Dawn, I have not been formally initiated into the Golden Dawn itself. Therefore even though my knowledge was possibly equal to if not greater than that of these new initiates, we could not talk about their practices or their knowledge.

371 Order material is still safely buried and out of the false light of those who would

profane it ” (“The Truth”). Thus secrecy is a rhetorical stance made possible by the hierarchy of the initiating institution and a strategy that works closely with the revelations and concealments of occult performance. However, initiation is caught up in secrecy in other more fundamental ways. Initiation rites are, in fact, ritualized manifestations of the act of keeping secrets, literally transforming secrecy into a performance. The root of this performance is undoubtedly within occult language itself.

The Spacing of the Secret

In many ways, initiation is simply a further step in the process in which magicians apply language to the project of divine communication and the search for origins. Through language and magic, initiation creates a space, a liminal zone where every word and gesture has profound symbolic significance. Secrecy can be seen as a function of negative language, a not-speaking, or what one might call an “occulting” in language, in which a crucial element is removed from the circuit of communication. In his practical text Inside a Magical Lodge: Group Ritual in the

Western Tradition , practitioner and author John Michael Greer calls it “breaking the web of communication.” Greer’s description of this web hearkens back to an Enlightenment-era fear of magic’s dominant power, while invoking a subtle reference to the current Internet culture, and even referencing the postmodern theme of the map and the territory:

We thus live in the midst of an extraordinarily complex web of communication, one that

expresses and reinforces specific ways of thinking about the world. This is not

necessarily a problem, but it can easily become one whenever the presence and effects of

the web are unnoticed. To absorb the web’s promptings without noticing them, after all,

372 is also to absorb the web’s implied world view without being aware of the process –

and what we do not notice we usually cannot counteract. . .It’s one thing to accept a map

of the world as a useful convenience, one that can be replaced when it’s no longer useful,

and quite another to accept it unthinkingly as the only map there is – or, worse, to

mistake the map for the world itself. (Greer, Lodge 114-115) 23

Greer, writing for a non-academic audience, manages to encapsulate a political philosophy for magical practitioners, in which the individual can make the choice to resist the dominant worldview. While solitude is certainly a way to remove oneself from societal restrictions, maintaining independence from this web while at the same time relating with others is certainly more challenging.

One of the methods of resistance that still works within a community setting, Greer claims, is keeping secrets. When one has a secret, “[a] gap is opened in the web, defined by the secret, and as long as the secret is kept, the gap remains. . . .If secrecy is freely chosen and freely kept . . . it becomes a powerful tool for reshaping awareness, one with remarkable powers and a range of constructive uses” ( Lodge 116). According to Greer, this awareness is essential to magical training, in which an individual uses her will to reshape her relationship to the world.

The presence of secrecy itself within magical groups points to a primary case of the concealment/revelation dynamic. Secrecy “focuses attention on what it conceals, and so— paradoxically--it reveals what it hides, and hides what it reveals. . . .The presence of the secret, like a hole in the fabric of social reality, draws attention in a way no ordinary approach to

23 Here, Greer refers to the famous Jorge Luis Borges story about the map becoming the territory. The story features prominently in “On Exactitude in Science,” which appeared in several works, most notably A Universal History of Infamy (London: Dutton/Plume, 1991 [1935]). An equally well-known reference to this story is Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulations (1).

373 publicity could possibly do” (117). Secrecy as publicity is certainly a concept that the

original Rosicrucians used to their utmost advantage. The writers of a small book on the York

rite of Freemasonry similarly claim that “Sea-birds are not more invariably attracted toward a

lighted beacon on a dark night, than men to whatever savors of mystery. Curiosity has had a

much greater influence in swelling the ranks of Masonry than philanthropy and brotherly love”

(3). It is this concept of secrecy as both a magical act of will and an attractive mystery that

practitioners often emphasize, rather than the practical aspects of hiding information. 24

In fact, within an initiatory context, Greer demonstrates that deconstructionist trope on secrecy: the secret may be that there is no secret. In other words, the great secrets that lodge members hold behind closed doors are not some key to world domination, as many conspiracy theorists fear, but rather sets of esoteric symbols and teachings that may have no significance outside of the lodge setting. This information is not secret because it is important or dangerous.

Rather, secrecy makes the information important. Greer writes

By being made secret, [the information] leaves the realm of ordinary knowledge and

communication and enters into a realm of shadow-knowledge and shadow-

communication made up of what is unknown and unsaid. By having and keeping the

secret, by knowing what not to say and how not to say it, the perceptive keeper of a secret

can enter into this same realm, and stand on the border between knowledge and the

unknown. (119)

24 Greer mentions the historical necessity of keeping identities secret because of persecution, or as in the case of the early Masonic guilds who kept information secret in order to guarantee their job security and to ensure only their members received benefits. He notes that before trade unions and life insurance, the guilds would provide for their own (Greer, Lodge 5-6, 112). This secrecy would evolve into elaborate signs and passwords by the mid- seventeenth century (Bullock 13).

374 Greer’s language certainly “occultizes” the common process of keeping secrets. Yet, he

acknowledges the considerable power of secreting as an almost magical speech act.

Magical instructional language and speech act theory both tend to acknowledge the power of

secrets to separate the subject from the circuit of communication, and to even create a separate

space, like Greer's “gap,” that allows for the secret to flourish and the secret keeper to practice.

Occult language either spoken between initiates or written into the occult text is defined

not merely by its utterance but by its silence. Derrida particularly experiments with this dialectic

between language and silence, revelation and concealment. In “Dissemination,” he follows the

development of the cosmogonic mythology, offering us the example of the pleroma : “a sort of

original space, a pneumatic layer ( tehiru ) in which the t zimtzum , the crisis within God, the

‘drama of God’ through which God goes out of himself and determines himself, takes place

(Dissemination 344). Here, Derrida evokes Isaac Luria’s kabbalistic terms (which he in turn

associates with Hegel and Boehme) in order to emphasize the creative power within Luria’s

interpretation of divine language, a speech that creates the universe not by revelation or

emanation, but by concealment and contraction. Again, recall Luria’s creation story: “How did

he produce and create the world? Like a man who gathers in and contracts his breath, so that the

smaller may contain the larger” (Scholem, Kabbalah 129). The divine creates a space through contraction, concealment, silence and darkness. For occultists, this other space is generative. It is the space of secrecy, of initiation. This is the space of the secret that will inevitably be filled by esoteric knowledge accessible only to those who have the password. Derrida, acknowledging that the spacing of the secret is paramount to its existence, asserts: “It is necessary to stand or step aside, to find the place proper to the experience of the secret"(“Denials,” 89).

375 Within this proper place, initiation introduces the novice to the secret knowledge, by

physically bringing the initiate into the space where the secret is hidden: the temple, the cave, the

concealed alcove, the crypt, and the library. The construction of these places for hiding secrets

plays a significant role in the process of separating the magical group. Greer indicates that some

lodge buildings were designed to deliberately mislead the uninitiated, either through the façade

or the layout of the rooms and corridors (118). Buildings associated with Masonry especially

bear the mark of this playful mode of architecture. 25 In the spacing of the secret, spaces

conducive to the passing of secrets are established: hidden places, out of the view of the

uninitiated. For the Golden Dawn, which used the reconstructed Rosicrucian Vault of the Adepti

as a setting for their rites, initiatory space reflects the performative speech act of the

Rosicrucians. Recalling the Rosicrucian legend, it is the discovery of this tomb that leads to the

Rosicrucians’ decision to send their message out to the world through the manifestos. Thus,

within the context of occult initiation, the image of the tomb (or pastos) becomes a synecdoche

for the revelation of secret wisdom. But that mystery can only be revealed in an isolated, hidden

place.

This performative is absolutely reflected in occult approaches to discourse. According to

Michel de Certeau, mystic speech creates a discourse outside the realm of the divine Book. Like

conjuring magicians, Certeau’s mystics re-create the sacred world with their words, and thus

“mystic space is constituted outside the fields of knowledge” ( Heterologies 89). In the case of

occult practitioners, this sacred world is outside exoteric fields of knowledge, and especially in

25 See Yates, The Occult Philosophy and the Elizabethan Age for a discussion of esoteric themes in Renaissance art and architecture. See also David Ovason, The Secret Architecture of Our Nation’s Capital: The Masons and the Building of Washington D.C ., (NY: Harper Collins, 2000), and James Stevens Curl, The Art and Architecture of Freemasonry: An Introductory Study , (NY: Overlook Press, 2002).

376 the case of Paganism, outside religions of the Book, in a different kind of marginality.

Similarly, Derrida claims that the vow to maintain the secret itself creates that space in language,

a “topolitology of the secret.” The promise of secrecy, then, creates a space in which the

“allegorical veil becomes a political shield, the solid barrier of a social division, a shibboleth .

One invents it to protect against access to a knowledge which remains in itself inaccessible, untransmissable, unteachable.” Yet, even this veil is inevitably thin, since Derrida professes that

“what is unteachable is nevertheless taught in another mode” (“Denials” 93). For our purposees, that other mode is initiatory ritual, wherein a tzimtzum-like contraction produces a space for knowledge to be both spoken and unspoken. Thus, initiation’s use of hidden space, secreted behind closed temple doors, mirrors the separation of esoteric discourse from mainstream, exoteric discourse. Here, we have the marginal actualized.

This separation from the world, actualized in initiatory spaces, is certainly a fundamental part of occult discourse. For instance, the Golden Dawn website explains secrecy in magical terms. The author, who signs his work in the initials of his order name, writes on the oath of silence, in which "inner" powers are only brought into "outer" existence through the methods of controlled speech, or silence. Being silent is preferable to breaking the flow of manifestation, which would loosely and indiscriminately disseminate the seeds of wisdom. The author sums up this tenet in a passage from a Golden Dawn ritual: To Know, to Will, to Dare, and to Be Silent

(“Oath of Silence”). Similarly, in The Kybalion , an early twentieth century text of Hermetic

Philosophy, the mysterious authors, known only as “The Three Initiates,” explain that only a select few initiates at a time can be entrusted with the secrets of the Hermetica. These elite “have never sought popular approval, nor numbers of followers. They are indifferent to these things, for they know how few there are in each generation who are ready for the truth, or who would

377 recognize it if it were presented to them” (11). They claim that despite the criticism of those

who believe these Hermetists should be more forthcoming, the so-called Masters “knew the folly

of attempting to teach to the world that which it was neither ready or willing to receive. The

Hermetists have never sought to be martyrs, and have, instead, sat silently aside with a pitying

smile on their closed lips . . . ” (13). The authors sum up their policy of reticence with the

aphorism “the lips of Wisdom are closed, except to the ears of Understanding” (12).26 This

discourse of hiddenness and separation becomes further embodied in actual ritual gestures within

initiation rites. This intriguing image of the silent initiate with closed lips becomes the model for

the “sign of silence,” a gesture that consists of raising one’s index finger to one’s lips and

stomping one’s right foot, almost in a childlike defiance of speech. John Michael Greer explains

that this gesture functions as a sealing element at the end of kabbalistic exercises like the Middle

Pillar, a protective way to close the energetic link projected by the practitioner ( Circles 69). The gesture is also usually accompanied by a sharp intake of breath, seemingly imitating the motion of tzimtzum, in which creation occurs within inhalation. While the gesture has particular significance within the ritual practice itself, it also demonstrates a rhetorical stance about magical practice. This ritual gesture, then, is a performance that embodies the quintessential themes of occult language and action, that through silence, a space is created for the initiate to learn the secrets and communicate with the divine current.

This sign of silence is also a key image in the occult discourse of humanist and Hermetic scholars. To illustrate this tradition, Faivre gives us an example of a 16 th century Hermetic engraving that demonstrates this particular occult dialectic. Achilles Bocchi’s Symbolicae quaestiones depicts Hermes, “god of language, discourse, and exchange,” with a seven-branched

378 candelabra in his left hand, while raising his right index finger to his lips in a gesture similar

to that of the childlike Egyptian god, Harpocrates, the model for the Golden Dawn sign of

silence, who appears on the Fool card of their Tarot deck (Cicero 34). Thus, within the hermetic,

occult construct, discourse is silent, or at least cleverly redirected. According to Faivre, with this

engraving, “[a] hermeneutic tension is established between veiling and unveiling, silence and

speech, hiding and revealing, by the device of a pregnant image that no conceptual explanation

could equal.” ( Access 33). Within the initiatory rite, such a confluence of symbolism, speech and performance is intended to awaken a certain sense of imagination in the initiate. An image like Bocchi’s Hermes performs an initiatic function similar to other alchemical illustrations like

John Dee’s Monas Hieroglyphica , to “emphasize and amplify the hieratic nature” of occult traditions. Within a text, according to Arthur Versluis, “the words and images can evoke in the reader the seeds of the experiences visible through the work, and over time those seeds can take root, grow, and flower in the reader too” ( Restoring Paradise 142). In the context of actual initiation rites, initiators may present these kinds of images to initiates and actually perform them as bodily gestures, in costume and in a staged setting. Again, returning to Regardie’s sense of

“the psychological spasm,” performances of silence accompanied by rich visual imagery are key elements of initiatory experience.

However, this imprinting process raises important questions about agency in the initiatory realm. In speaking and writing about initiation, I often struggle with using the passive voice, describing initiation as something that is done to the candidate. What are the implications of this passivity? Am I dangerously treading on the ground so feared by the Frankfurt philosophers, that the process of initiation simply creates an easily impressionable individual who will go blindly

26 The Kybalion , originally published as a pamphlet in 1908, was published as a hardcover book in 1940 by

379 along with institutional authority? A section of the charge passed in the first degree Masonic

York rite seems to indicate as much, since the new initiate is instructed: “In the State you are to be a quiet and peaceable citizen, true to your government, and just to your country; you are not to countenance disloyalty or rebellion, but patiently submit to legal authority, and conform with cheerfulness to the government of the country in which you live” (Duncan 56). This may be a response to the conditions of the early to mid-nineteenth century, in which Freemasonry was increasingly falling out of favor because of an anti-Masonic campaign, accusing them of being seditious (Bullock 316). In contrast to this passive submission, the Masons do include a section of the oath that affirms the candidate is approaching the group of his own free will. Modern occult groups (like the Hermetic Order) generally have this section as well. But feminist witchcraft tends to emphasize this even further. For instance, Starhawk claims that a candidate is only ready for initiation when she is able to take responsibility for her own feelings and actions, and how they might influence the group. Further, that candidate must ask for initiation, “because she is not ready until she realizes that she, and no one else, controls the course of her progress in the Craft” ( Spiral Dance 174). Thus, despite the outer ritual trappings that may suggest a kind of passivity on the part of the candidate, Pagan practitioners often emphasize personal responsibility, will, and individual growth as motivating factors for the rite.

Still, the magical language available to speak of the initiatory charge often utilizes feminine and passive imagery. The moment of initiation is often said to magically “open” the candidate to divine energy. Before my initiation, I was so completely physically and mentally altered as a result of my meditation and the ritual bath that I can not explain my experience of the rite in any articulate manner. And perhaps this is the true nature of secrecy surrounding initiation

the Yogi Publication Society, associated with a Chicago Masonic Temple. The book is still readily available.

380 rites that truly have an impact on an initiate. Many of the rites of Freemasonry and the

Golden Dawn were consistently practiced even after they were made public, mainly because the oaths of secrecy were not so much about these liturgical details, but about the candidate’s actual experience. Tanya Luhrmann, who also argues that secrecy shields the practitioner from outside criticism, succinctly describes the role secrecy plays in initiation and why publication of initiatory rites does not diminish the mystery:

Magicians call esoteric knowledge secretive and speak about initiations through which

deity-like initiators reveal knowledge which they have previously concealed. The real

point seems to be that ‘esoteric knowledge’ is the name given to a certain sort of

experience, and that access to the experience itself is restricted to the participants of

secretive groups. Writing about the experience cannot give access to this knowledge: the

experience must be experienced, and only the experiencer can lay claim to his own,

unique and inherently hidden knowledge of what happened (253).

This notion of secrecy as subjective experience is common in writing about Western initiation.

Starhawk asserts that particular knowledge is secret not because of prohibitions, but because the knowledge can only be experienced, and that any individual’s experience cannot dictate any other’s experience ( Spiral Dance 22).

Thus, initiation is based on a paradigm in which the individual tests his or her subjective boundaries against and with an initiating group by dramatizing that ambivalent struggle. These particular performances challenge, in the sense Jon McKenzie intends: they provoke, contest, and stake a claim (32). Like the field of performance studies itself, rites of passage in Western occultism, particularly initiations, are the liminal-norm for magical practice. The language of transformation always surrounds initiation rites and transformation is ever the goal for magical

381 practitioners. McKenzie’s critique of the liminal-norm might equally apply here, that “the liminal-norm is itself an effect of performative power, one that has prevented us from addressing the onto-historical forces that connect performance studies to other performances. Paradoxically, our attentiveness to liminal performance has kept us out of the loop with respect to the performativity of power and, in doing so, has limited our liminality” (166). Yet within these initiatory rites, the dramatic action often underscores their connection to other performances of power, as in the Masonic Templar rite’s gauntlet, or the revealing and concealing of the hoodwink. Issues of power and representations of power are always present in initiation, and some groups use the ritual as an opportunity to interrogate these issues.

Shifting Initiatory Power

Ritual initiation, by its very definition, deploys secrecy as a modality of power. The mere fact that the candidate is initially denied access to information, in essence kept outside of the circle, before the rite speaks to the ways in which power differentials function in the rites. These differing levels of power and knowledge are dramatized, displayed and ritualized within occult initiation. In studying initiation ritual within the Reclaiming Collective community in San

Francisco, Jone Salomonsen discusses ritualization as “a social practice and, therefore, also a form of social control. It constructs and appoints limited and limiting power relationships (as in initiation rituals and other rites of passages) as well as deconstructs non-appointed power positions” (163). Similar to McKenzie’s definition of performance (30), ritualization can either support a dominant paradigm or transform it through this approach to power relationships. When dramatized in a situation like Masonic or Golden Dawn initiation, as the initiating officers lead around the blindfolded candidate, it is easy to see who has the power and who submits in that

382 situation. But what exactly is the candidate submitting to? The use of occult initiation within

Wiccan and feminist Witchcraft contexts has offered the opportunity to explore that question and to further foreground power issues within the initiatory dynamic.

Gerald Gardner valued traditional occult initiation, as his Wiccan initiation rites reflected

Masonic and Golden Dawn practice quite thoroughly, including the oath at knifepoint and the practice known as taking the candidate’s measure. In Gardnerian practice, young female witches would present themselves to a male initiator, often Gardner himself. As the practice progressed, male initiates would also present themselves to a female initiator. 27 For feminist Witchcraft in particular, the notion of a candidate submitting to a person, especially male, certainly seems antithetical to feminist and anarchist politics. In fact, the issue of gender polarity in general is a contentious one in feminist witchcraft. The symbolism of Western occultism is rife with notions of gender polarity, and Salomonsen accordingly critiques these aspects, like elemental correspondences (water, earth = feminine; air, fire = masculine) that “legitimize and reinforce ideological and social hierarchies between men and women and to naturalize notions of asymmetrical gender polarity” (180). 28 She further asks why feminist Witches have

“appropriated an erotic worldview and a symbol system that have contributed to essentialize gender and glorify static, authoritarian power relations . . .” (180). She answers her own question

27 Although Gardner had a reputation for choosing attractive young women for his priestesses, he claimed that merely preserving heterosexual gender polarity was paramount (Hutton, Triumph 339).

28 One of the problematic symbols that Salomonsen mentions is the so-called “pillars of correspondence” that map a gendered cosmology of the universe, reflected in the ritual circle, where West is associated with water, the feminine and emotions and the East with air, the masculine and the intellect, for instance. Yet the source for these “pillars” is the Kabbalistic Tree of Life glyph, which includes three pillars: one associated with the masculine, the other with the feminine, and the third (the basis for the “Middle Pillar” exercise) as a balance between the two. Not only does this design subvert traditional polarity in that it offers a dialectical rather than binary approach to the system, but also because the spheres on each side and even the names of the pillars do not coincide with received masculine and feminine archetypes. For instance, the masculine Pillar of Mercy has spheres dealing with traditionally feminine aspects like emotion (Netzach, associated with the planet Venus), while the feminine Pillar of

383 through a kind of feminist semiotics: “Meanings are not inherent in the symbol but attributed to the symbol through cultural association. It is therefore absolutely possible to appropriate elemental philosophy without adopting it wholesale. As with any other symbolic tradition, occult philosophy can be reformed and twisted in anti-dualist, anti-hierarchical directions” (181). It is this adaptability and magical ability to transform that lies at the heart of Witchcraft’s approaches to initiation processes, and indeed, its approach to the practice of Western occultism in general.

For instance, Starhawk reveals a technique similar to the hoodwink for her Wiccan initiations, when she describes an initiation ritual for a particular individual: “At Paul’s initiation, he was told to close his eyes and was led into the garden. At intervals, he was allowed to open his eyes; a light was flashed and revelations were made; for example, he was shown an ear of corn, and told, ‘Behold, the Maiden.’ He was shown a rose, and told, ‘Feel the blossom and the thorn.’ He was shown a lacy, insect-eaten leaf, and told, ‘See how life feeds on life’”

(SpiralDance 179). Here, the Wiccan ethos transforms the esoteric and abstract symbolism of

Masonry and Golden Dawn ritual to the more practical, nature-based symbolism of an earth religion. Yet, this example complicates the hoodwink performance by asking the candidate to close his eyes, rather than imposing blindness upon him with the actual blindfold. Another clue to how Wiccans may interpret the transmission of knowledge is Starhawk’s use of Brazilian educator Paolo Freire’s theories in shaping her “Empowered Learning model” for training activists. She describes this process as “not so much about the transfer of information as about providing a framework for reflection on experience. Teachers or trainers are not trying to push their agenda or philosophy, but to create a process in which learners develop their own” ( Webs

64).

Severity has spheres associated with traditionally masculine qualities like strength (Geburah, associated with the

384 As some of the contrasts between the Masonic and Golden Dawn model of initiation and Starhawk’s descriptions of initiation imply, a significant shift occurred in the application of

Western occultism and its rites to a specifically American Pagan movement that embraced progressive political ideals, consensus over hierarchy, feminism, and environmentalism.

Starhawk seems to have mixed views about initiation, acknowledging its importance, but discouraging its use to determine status, arguing “To link it to external rewards would undercut its meaning as a heart-called commitment to the Goddess and community” ( Spiral 276). She emphasizes initiation as a rite of passage that marks “a new stage in personal growth” for the individual ( Spiral 50). Moving away from the impersonal, ceremonial initiations of Masonry, she emphasizes the interpersonal aspects of such a rite. She instructs her reader to

choose the people you want to ask for initiation, and they should be initiated Witches

whom you respect and feel close to, who have some sort of knowledge, wisdom, personal

power, or qualities you yourself want to have. An initiation creates a strong bond and a

karmic tie, so they should be people within your community you feel close to, not

strangers or figures you admire from a distance. ( Spiral 242)

Starhawk’s focus on the individual’s needs and interpersonal relations illustrates a shift in emphasis towards the individual and her experience, while still maintaining some of the ritual trappings of the more patriarchal traditions. Further, Starhawk’s descriptions of particular initiation rites indicate the degree to which such rites are tailored to the individual. The Hermetic

Order of Chicago similarly followed a combination of ritual structure and individualized content in their initiations, since every candidate had a unique personal history, set of emotional, psychological, and spiritual issues, and abilities to bring to the rite. Thus, initiations create the

planet Mars) and intellect (Hod, associated with the planet Mercury).

385 potential for the individual to express herself in not only magical ways but in social and

political ways as well. And the opportunity for this work comes through the candidate’s

particular relationships with members of the community, particularly those she sees as mentors.

The importance of this dynamic between teacher and student reveals itself in the debate

about self-initiation, which especially rages among Wiccan groups. As Chas Clifton describes,

the 1970s were particularly a period in which “a great deal of energy and ink would be expended

on the question of initiation and what constituted a valid initiation” (22). Things would further

change when the well-known witch Raymond Buckland, reversed his formerly rigid position and

declared self-initiation valid. This was liberating to a great many practitioners who could not

obtain access to the closely guarded secrets and relieved Buckland’s one coven, the only official

Gardnerian group in America, of the burden of initiating so many interested newcomers.

However, some critics of Buckland’s action have cynically suggested that this mainly a savvy

business move that would allow Buckland and his group to make money from selling self-

initiation kits (Clifton 26). The controversy continues, however. One of Loretta Orion’s

interviewees in her Never Again The Burning Times may represent the extreme of the self- initiatory view: “Say you’re a witch three times and you’re a witch” (56). Meanwhile, traditionalists like Yvonne and Gavin Frost insist on the discipline that their Wiccan initiations require, and scoff at the idea that someone can be a witch after reading a book and lighting a candle (Hopman and Bond 40). The issue is also relevant among various groups associating themselves with the name “Golden Dawn.” Though some traditionalists may disagree, Chic and

Sandra Tabatha Cicero, both adepts of the Golden Dawn who have their own program, encourage it. To this end, they have an online correspondence course and a book entitled Self-

Initiation into the Golden Dawn Tradition . The book purports to make the Golden Dawn system

386 more accessible, filling in the gaps of Regardie’s classic work, especially when a trustworthy teacher is unavailable. Similarly, Greer believes that self-initiation may be a viable substitute for a group initiation, even if the process may take somewhat longer since a novice would not be able to channel the necessary forces at the required intensity. A working group develops its own identity, what Greer calls an “egregor”: “a pattern of energies on the astral and etheric levels that functions as a kind of collective personality, [and] can be deliberately charged with power and used as a tool in ritual, and its energies can be transmitted to new members who are initiated into the lodge” ( Lodge 59). The initiate takes on the tone and character of that egregor, for good or ill.

Therefore, in order to accomplish this kind of energy on one’s own, a self-initiating novice must work harder and repeat the required workings but, Greer claims, the end result is the same

(Circles 59). Northage-Orr also refers to the egregor concept when she compares initiation with

Catholic ordination, a particular initiation ceremony in which the rite connects the new priest with the extremely potent and long-standing Catholic egregor. She also explains that even though any initiate can act as clergy, those with more experience have stronger contact with the egregor, and with initiators on the “inner planes.” Here, Northage-Orr links initiation with the trope of the

Secret Chiefs, the individual “spirit guides” associated with a given magical tradition.

For initiates of the Hermetic Order of Chicago, these issues of initiatory status were also in contention (whether status is conferred or confirmed). Some of the initiates I interviewed told me that initiation merely legitimized the leadership and organizing tasks they were already performing, while others spoke of how initiation gave them a motivational nudge to become more active in the rituals and in the community. Again, Northage-Orr claims that initiation provides the initiate with access, but it does not itself confer status. She believes that status is earned, not given. Further, she expresses frustration at those who expect to feel more “powerful”

387 after an initiation, asserting that “initiation does not make you progress. It gives you a doorway, but you have to step through it. This is a path of self-development. Others may aid you on your way, but you have to do the work.” 29 Alan Salmi also described his particular ordination rite as a call to service, rather than a conferral of status or power. He recalls being struck by a moment in the rite in which his initiators instructed him to look at the community surrounding him (the rite had both private and public aspects): “They told me that because of my status, I had a responsibility as a spiritual advisor and a leader, that I had to be a servant to these people. I was not above, but in service, which was more important than just getting a new degree.” Therefore, these initiations tend to emphasize social responsibility over status. With the Hermetic Order, initiatory degree often did not dictate whether a member would be able to lead a ritual, though it did sometimes matter in decision-making. Jone Salomonsen reports that, similarly, Reclaiming

Collective’s initiations were not required for acting as priestess or teaching classes, though a covert hierarchy seemed to develop between initiates and those who merely attended public rites

(50). As stated earlier, initiates at Order rites were often easy to spot because they had coordinating elemental colors and knew how to draw the pentagrams and chant the Enochian invocations.

However, for Salomonsen, initiation deals with more than just questions of status. We have already discussed how Salomonsen came to see Reclaiming’s acceptance of her researcher identity as a crucial stage in her own reluctant initiation. She aptly describes initiation as “The most efficient and comprehensive restaging and recontextualization of the human conflict between unity and separation, and of the paradoxical need of an adult to be simultaneously

29 Personal Interview, 8 July 2004.

388 joined and separate, related and independent, autonomous and connected . . .” (160). These

conflicts aptly describe the contemporary magickal practitioner, particularly in feminist

witchcraft, which values community and consensus over hierarchy and secrecy. She further

explains that through training in ritualization, Witches prepare for initiation with a sense that

they have control over their lives, which she interprets as the application of occult knowledge to

“shaping reality” and improving the self (176). Thus, Witchcraft initiations emphasize personal

growth over traditional occult values of secrecy, knowledge, and status.

Yet, Salomonsen asks “If the final meaning of the initiation ritual is human growth, and

not to hand over instrumental knowledge, why the secrecy?” She concludes that secrecy in this

instance is deeply connected to a desire candidates have for an unknown “it” that initiates seem

to possess (278). Like Regardie, Salomonsen tends to interpret initiation psychologically,

constructing it as “an idealized imitation of the parent-child relation, a relation in which the

apprentice ultimately seeks to merge with the perfect love object” (250). In this schema, the

initiate longs for connection to an authority figure, a surrogate parent or family, or perhaps even

a divine parent. In both my initiation experience and others’ narratives about theirs, this

construction does tend to emerge. Troubled Pagan seekers often look to a coven or group to act as a surrogate family to replace damaged or dysfunctional birth families, and just as often they are disappointed when their adoptive circle does not live up to those expectations. Salomonsen’s assessment reveals a problematic approach that some candidates take in which initiation offers a way to obtain some magical, ineffable “it” that they want to achieve, thus falsely quantifying the rite as the goal itself, and not a more complex process. But the experience of initiation may tend to overwhelm those expectations. Like Derrida and Taussig, Salomonsen evokes the postmodern trope of “the secret is that there is no secret”: “The ritual unveils the desired “it,” the holy secret,

389 in declaring that there are no secrets, except the secrecy of silence.” But the candidate must experience this as a performing body. Salomonsen makes this point by differentiating between deep experiential knowledge and ideological knowledge, which “is regarded as superficial, and its truth can be overruled and lost in power-over games in which the individual loses sight of life as interconnected.” The experience of initiation may prevent the candidate “from ever misusing power-over or putting herself in separation from the web of life” (279). Salomonsen’s invocation of Starhawk’s language about power and connection certainly indicates the possibility that

Witchcraft initiations may reconfigure classic occult power relations.

Accordingly, Nikki Bado-Fralick does concede that in the Wiccan initiation process, the relationship between initiators and students is not egalitarian, due to a “hierarchy of experiential practice, mastery, and authority in which the teacher has the expert knowledge that the student is attempting to acquire” (101). Therefore, a superficial reading of an initiation rite may interpret it as a performance of power, but such a reading, Bado-Fralick argues, “fails completely to take into account participants’ understandings of either the embodied nature of ritual praxis or the development of an intimate community” (132). For instance, she offers another take on the hoodwinking aspect of initiation by describing the use of a blindfold in a Wiccan rite. Rather than reading the blindfolding as a performance of power, in which concealment and revelation works because the candidate is denied sight, she emphasizes the ability of the blindfold to awaken the candidate to his other senses. In this instance, blindfolding participates in a “ritual unmaking of our cultural dependence on ‘visualism’ in the production of knowledge” (129).

Here, Bado-Fralick critiques readings of the hoodwink that assume knowledge production, caught in the act of concealing and revealing, is mainly visual. Rather, the candidate receives knowledge through the body. Thus, through a ritual process, the blindfolded candidate becomes a

390 performing body, what Bado-Fralick calls the “body-in-practice” (130). By virtue of his location in an outdoor ritual scene, similar to my aforementioned outdoor bachelor rite, the candidate in Bado-Fralick’s example is already in communion with Nature as an entity, “but his power is unavailable to him; it cannot be actualized until his body-in-practice is engaged in the unmaking and remaking of initiation” (132). Akin to the “passing of the charge,” this actualization, Bado-Fralick argues, is not a single initiatory moment in isolation but is “actually embedded in a long and multidirectional process of increasingly somatic learning and practice,” in a movement towards intimacy with the community (143).

Contemporary magickal groups that work on a Wiccan model are often highly ambivalent with regards to the occult history that spawned them. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why

Wiccan origin stories often involved grandmothers and folk healing rather than genealogies stemming from patriarchal figures like Aleister Crowley or Gerald Gardner. Though it may not be desirable, Wiccans must often contend with that reality, and the initiation rite is the primary stage for that confrontation. The initiation rite, with its roots in the all-male world of

Freemasonry, represents that occult tradition like no other artifact in magickal practice.

Freemasons and their concern with ranks and degrees certainly influenced Gardnerian initiations, as they both have three degrees and share many ritual aspects, as we have seen. Their performed trials and challenges were meant to prepare a candidate for a harsh world inhabited by those who will never understand the mystery, engendering an intense elitism among its ranks. But because these trials were such dramatic performances, one might wonder if they were meant to mirror the hierarchy and rank of the exoteric world, or rather expose those power relations as performances themselves. Thus, the great secret that there is no secret may indeed be the public secret that

Michael Taussig speaks of, “that which is known but generally not articulated” (“Viscerality”

391 242). Perhaps Freemasonry, and other occult traditions, was created to preserve that secret, to allow its members to recognize the performative in everyday life, and giving them the tools to negotiate that performance. Wiccan initiations, though they ostensibly subvert those older occult traditions, seem to follow along the same lines, as they provide their practitioners with the tools for “self-empowerment,” the ability to maintain individual agency in a strange world. Thus, contemporary magickal traditions create their own brand of occultism, one that hides the secret of experience and the idea that each individual initiatory experience is unique, that all initiates have their own path of light, their own embodied performance to enact.

Conclusion

Initiation is a manifestation of the practice of occultism in its most refined form. Though not all practitioners of Western occult and magickal traditions undergo actual initiation rites, the initiatory process permeates the discourse of occultism, to the extent that practitioners imbue their own personal narratives with initiatory themes and symbolism. The image is pervasive. The initiate encounters secret knowledge within the hidden room after facing various challenges without and within the chamber. Even a solitary practitioner without the benefit of an initiatory group may imagine his or her initial involvement with a strange new set of practices and beliefs in this way. This initiatory paradigm is so far reaching that when some scholars attempt to study occult practitioners, their traditions and their communities, they inevitably invoke an initiatory narrative in their own work, comparing their ethnographic encounter to that of an initiate gaining entry into the inner sanctum. As I (and others) have argued, this tendency to impose an initiatory structure on academic work is itself concomitant with a paradigm inherent to the pursuit of education, in which candidates undergo trials in order to achieve a higher level of initiation, symbolized by the conferring of a degree.

392 However, those who are able to experience an actual initiation rite, in which members

of a group establish a charged space and offer a powerful ritual structure, may see nearly all the

aspects of occult training embodied in a dramatic form that demands participation from the

candidate. Through the use of esoteric symbolism and language, all the participants in the

initiation rite partake in the occult project of remaking the world into a liminal space that allows

for communication with the divine. This is, in essence, a return to a mysterious sacred time in

which such direct communication was possible, a goal pursued by occult practitioners ranging

from medieval and Renaissance magicians like John Dee and Cornelius Agrippa to the vast

number of Hermetic, Rosicrucian, Masonic, and Theosophical societies that have attracted

members for centuries through their promises of “ancient” traditions and secret knowledge.

Further, by aiding a candidate in his or her personal transformation, the participants of initiation

rites engage in vital acts of magic that take seriously the magician’s ability to shape

consciousness at will and stimulate the spiritual and psychological evolution of humanity.

Finally, the initiation rite establishes the bonds between the individual and the community,

impressing upon the candidate the necessity of confronting issues of power and challenging the

candidate to apply his or her ability and knowledge ethically and responsibly.

We began our investigation of initiation as a performance through the example of the

Golden Dawn hoodwink. In this crucial part of the initiation rite, initiators lead the candidate through a performance meant for an audience of one, hiding and revealing occult symbolism and knowledge by raising the blindfold and then lowering it. All the while, the initiators speak and enact a liturgical text that casts the candidate in the role of seeker in an initiatory drama that mirrors the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Corpus Hermetica , and any number of Western initiation narratives. The candidate fulfills his or her role in the timeless drama by willfully

393 submitting to the trials of initiation. While this rite may seem to be a suspect inculcation based on an unequal power dynamic, in which the candidate appears to play a passive role, he or she ultimately emerges as a magickal initiate who has made a choice to transform his or her life.

Nikki Bado-Fralick’s analysis of the hoodwink from a Wiccan perspective underlines this shift from passive audience to active performer by highlighting the commitment that the blindfolded candidate makes to fully personify the initiatory moment. This embodiment occurs through an engagement with the physical body and all its senses, while at the same time locating oneself in a subjective experience of nature. This Wiccan example serves to illuminate how we might construct occultism not as passive and disempowering but as performative and immersive. Here, through the application and synthesis of discursive occult knowledge and training, the practitioner enacts an ineffable, non-discursive initiatory performance significant for the individual. This very act demonstrates how occultism functions as a performative way to construct a magickal self within a magickal world.

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